by JC Hay
Na’im kept his eyes mostly closed and trusted his memory and, more importantly, his other senses to keep him safe. Without the distraction of sight it was easier to stay in the meditative brainspace where he just acted, instead of thinking.
He dropped to his knees and slid, letting his momentum carry him towards the back hallway and under the swinging arm of one of the security guards. As he slid past the guard’s leg, Na’im hooked a hand around the man’s ankle, lifted and shoved. The force was ninety degrees off from the guard’s balance, and he toppled. Into several other party-goers by the sound of it.
There was no stopping to admire his handiwork. He could already hear the angry shouts of the security team over Angela’s enraged shriek that declared him an impostor to every person in range. A figure that included most of German-speaking Switzerland, by the sound of it. Na’im vaulted to his feet and broke back into a run, stopping to turn inside a punch from another security guard. Catching the guard’s forearm, he twisted, using the momentum of the punch to carry the guard past and to the floor.
His senses stayed sharp, on high alert for the click of a pistol safety or the high-energy whine of a mangler. Not that he expected security to break out more lethal weapons in a crowd this large, but if Zurich figured out their proprietary data was at risk then all bets were off.
Na’im opened his eyes for a moment to take stock. The door to the stairs was still at the far end of the hall, off to his right. The door next to it, the monitoring station for the security team, opened. More security would be pouring in from every direction. Logical thought said he should be leading them away from Elise, not running towards her, but he didn’t change direction. Two guards stepped into the hall between him and the stairs, stun rods crackling in their hands.
The first swing came high as the other guard went low. Na’im stepped into the lower strike, letting the middle of the rod crack into his thigh rather than the dangerous, sparking tip. The resistance surprised the guard, but she recovered quickly, stepping back as her partner closed in. The coordination of their movements was so perfect that Na’im wondered if they had been linked through some some experimental technology, or merely trained together since childhood. In either case, the fought as a single entity, pressing Na’im back from the stairs toward where more guards waited for them.
The two guards circled him, and finally gave him the opening he’d been waiting for. The male guard feinted, while his partner predicted Na’im’s path and cut off the path to the stairs with a high-voltage thrust. Instead of following the thrust, Na’im jumped over the feint and kicked the male guard in the wrist. The tip of his stun rod went wide, catching his partner in the knee.
The woman dropped, convulsing as the voltage surged through her and overloaded her mods. The man paused for a moment, dumbstruck at the mistake, and Na’im turned his partner’s stunner on him as well.
Before the second guard hit the floor, Na’im vaulted over the first and headed toward the stairs. There would be a few brief seconds before more guards rushed past, and ideally he could get upstairs and warn Elise that things had gone wildly wrong.
The door to the stairs ripped open and Na’im threw a strike by reflex, hoping to take advantage of the guard’s moment of distraction. Only after his hand was in motion did he recognize the smell of Elise’s perfume in its direct path.
Chapter Seven
Na’im’s open palm caught her directly in the sternum and drove the air from her with a grunt. That wasn’t what turned her blood colder than the waters of the Limmat that flowed not far away. His face had the same flat affect, the same emotionless slack that he had in the grip of the cuckoo programming that had been implanted against his will. She stumbled backwards up the stairs and he pursued.
Then his eyes opened and she could see the panic and horror that rushed into his face. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” He dropped to the ground next to her.
Elise waved him off and coughed out the word “door” just as the first of the guards got came through the opening. She gripped his wrists, stabilizing him as he kicked back with both feet and knocking the guard back out through the door.
Na’im grabbed the door and slammed it shut, stared a moment at the handle. “There’s no lock.”
Elise pulled herself up, despite the pain in her chest. Each breath hurt, and she wondered if something had cracked under the speed and force of his strike. She tried to hide the discomfort, but the concern that knitted his brows together told her she’d done a poor job of it. “Leave it. Gotta go.”
She leaned into him as he wrapped an arm around her to help her up the stairs. Elise pushed through the pain, breaking into a sprint as they reached the top of the stairs and starting towards the window at the end of the hall.
“I’m not jumping out another window with you,” Na’im said. Despite his words, he didn’t slow down or break stride.
She smiled. “Fire escape, actually. It’s not perfect but it will have to do.” For a moment, it felt perfectly natural. Good. Despite the chaos, shouting, and threat of arrest.
A flurry of shouts behind them told her that the guards had reached the top of the stairs. She tensed, waiting for one of them to decide taking them dead was better than letting them get away, but no one pulled a weapon that she could hear. They scrambled towards the window, and she slapped the fire alarm on the wall as they passed.
Klaxons sounded throughout the building and she heard the doors to the lab lock down magnetically. In 30 seconds, the room would flood with and oxygen binding compound, and no one would be able to enter for hours. That should give Yashila all the time she needed. More importantly at the moment, it started to inflate the emergency slide at the end of the hall.
She sped her pace, reaching the window just as the emergency bolts blew and threw it out of their way. Three steps more and she leaped out over the slide. She hung there for a heartbeat before gravity caught her and dragged her to the slide and down to the ground. Tension in the fabric told her Na’im was close behind and she rolled out of the way as soon as she reached the ground.
All around them, it was chaos. Party goers milled about in half-panic, half-curiosity. As the flashing lights of the party gave way to the strobing lights of emergency vehicles, she grabbed Na’im’s hand and dragged him away from the building as quickly and casually as she could.
Thirty minutes later, Elise finally felt like they could stop. The cold, which had been bracing before, had turned bitter. It cut through her evening dress with vicious precision and ate into her bones. The only relief was the District Nine train station up ahead. Not the best hub, certainly, but it stayed busy at all hours, and at the moment, the heavy propane heaters she could see glowing on the platforms promised a welcome respite from the cold.
As she slowed, Na’im came to a stop. When he didn’t let go of her hand, she stopped too. Knowing — dreading - what she’d see, she turned to face him anyway. It didn’t make the concern on his face any less painful for her. Elise jumped on the grenade before he could speak. “I don’t blame you, you know. We spent so much time teaching you to react instead of think, it was bound to happen.”
He wrapped both his hands around hers, trapping them in a cocoon of warmth as he stood and watched her. Like he was memorizing her face. Like he was leaving.
“Don’t you goddamn dare.” The cold was gone, replaced with an anger that burned inside her like a forge. “After all we’ve been through. Don’t even think about it.”
“What if this is what Jalila had planned all along? Zurich would be the obvious choice, given their files. What if she always expected us to go for this so she could get her hands on that data. What if this is yet another subroutine that she programmed in for these situations?”
The panic and pain in his voice ripped at her. She couldn’t imagine not being able to trust anything that happened, worrying it was someone else’s plan rather than her own. “Then we take precautions. You never see the data. You don’t touch it.” Techni
cally, that was already going to happen. Yashilla would filter out only the specific things that she’d asked for and would keep the rest for her own nefarious purposes. God only knew how long that would take, but still. If his concerns had merit, that would be fine. “The rest of the data stays safely out of our hands.”
“Who has it?”
“Someone who owed me a favor.” It wasn’t technically a lie. Plus not telling him might be the best way to check his murderous intent.
“Good. Never tell me. It’s safer that way.” He relaxed slightly before tapping the cortical-matrix at the side of his head. “But that doesn’t mean there’s not more stuff hiding in here. More traps that she has laid for me. For anyone around me. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She chuckled. “Then don’t worry about hurting me. We’re adults. Trust me to make my own decision about my safety.”
“It’s dangerous. She won’t stop.”
Elise pulled his hand to her mouth and kissed the back of his knuckles, marveling that his skin was still warm despite the chill wind. “Life is dangerous. There are no guarantees. I’m willing to accept that if you are.” She stepped closer and put a hand on his chest. “You are stronger than she is. We’ve proven that once.”
His hand snaked around her waist, and the cold slipped away from her. “I’m scared,” he said at last.
“Good. So am I,” Elise admitted. “I’d be more concerned if we weren’t. But I love you, and I think it’s worth it. Whatever is coming down the pipe, we can handle it.”
He kissed her, not the rough hunger of when his control had shredded, but a careful, almost reverent touch. She grabbed the back of his head to slash his mouth into hers, sending heat flooding through both of their bodies. After too short a moment, she released him and smiled at her handiwork - his disheveled hair, his swollen lips. Hers.
“There’s a train coming,” she said with a smile. “We should probably be on it.”
He nodded and threaded his fingers through hers. “Together.”
Elise smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
●
Mumbai Manhunt
Blurb
They made him a destroyer...
...she needed a defender.
Joshi's hunt is at an end - All he needs is one more successful mission, and he can retire a free man. But he never expected his target to be a ghost from his past.
Netta is done hiding. She always expected the corporations would send someone. She just never expected it to be the one person she'd ever trusted.
Forced into flight, with a legendary assassin in pursuit, is not the time to rekindle old flames. But the heart knows what it wants, and with time running out, they will either survive together or die alone
Chapter One
I
f Corporate Services planned to make him revisit all of his past mistakes before he retired, Palashkulum Joshi wished they’d have let him keep his addiction to cigarettes. It’s not like the cancer would get a chance to kill him before the implants finished the job. But no, CorpServ had edited out his nicotine addiction as easily as they’d given him modifications to fix all his other supposed weaknesses.
Except for regret, that is. They let him keep that all for himself.
He leaned against the open window and watched the street below, which was surprisingly empty for the time of day. The thin breeze was hot, humid enough to feel like trying to breathe through a damp rag, but he allowed himself a long, slow breath all the same. A chance to enjoy the calm before the storm, the quiet prelude to opening the door and confronting Netta Schulmann in a way that guaranteed any fond memories she might have toward him would be destroyed.
Or maybe he was kidding himself, and she didn’t remember him at all. He’d helped her settle in to the lab three years ago, and for a few brief hours they’d found some solace in each other’s bodies as well. Despite what Corporate Services no doubt considered a messy physical entanglement, he’d been there as an employee. Someone hired to do a job.
Same as now, really. The difference being that the last time his job had been to comfort. To soothe and welcome. While they weren't things at which he excelled, Netta had made it easy by being grateful for the smallest kindness.
Now, CorpServ had sent him back to her lab—either through random chance, or some twisted sense of irony—to do the things they'd remade him for. To break. To terrorize. To destroy.
At least once he'd finished this job he'd be out. His debts to CorpServ would be paid, and he could retire, live out the few remaining months he had left someplace with clear skies and endless blue ocean. The Maldives, perhaps.
He pulled the heavy autopistol from its holster and gave it a quick once-over. Like him, it had been created with a singular purpose, and it dripped with intimidation and lethality. The look of it tended to stop arguments and end conflicts without it ever firing a shot.
Which was just as well, since as soon as he fired it the recoil would blow half the bones in his wrist to powder. The unfortunate downside to implant rejection syndrome.
Time to work. He shoved away from the window to start down the hall. At the opposite end, a heavy metal door with fresh electronic locks stood in stark contrast to the chipped plaster, graffiti, and wood. He ran his fingers over the keypad, remembering Dr. Schulmann’s nervousness when she had ordered it, as though she could scarcely believe that BlueGene would just allow her to spend money to set up her lab however she'd wanted.
Not that her wants made it more secure. He tapped in the override code that Corporate Services had given him. The lock beeped, and the door opened with a quiet puff of air as the pressure difference pushed dust away from the lab.
Joshi closed the door as he stepped through. The clutter and disarray in the hall outside paled in comparison to the lab. uneaten food in dented containers lay scattered about the room, and garbage had been pushed to the table edges to clear spaces. A bag of yarn spilled over next to the computer, and a half-finished scarf poured off the black rubber table and pooled on the floor, while a nearby gene sequencer had been ripped open and its core removed. An empty row of tablet docks sat in one of the few clear areas, but their devices were nowhere in sight. Fear stretched its first icy fingers along his spine.
Despite his surveillance, all the preparation, it had finally happened. His stomach did a slow roll. Thirteen years without dropping a contract at CorpServ, only fail at the end. He scanned the empty lab again, but the answer was clear - someone had beaten him to the lab and taken Netta’s data before him. He was too late.
It was too hot to think. The digital thermometer mounted on the wall above her cot read 34 degrees. As a reflex Netta converted back to the Fahrenheit she'd grown up with—93.4 degrees. Add in the humidity and the perceived temperature would be over 120. No wonder she couldn't sleep. Comfort would be elusive until the rains started up again.
The lab door hissed in the other room, and her heart clawed its way into her throat. She'd locked the door; she could remember locking it. A detached part of her brain noted the physiological changes that accompanied a sympathetic cascade from the adrenal medulla. Dry mouth? Check. Pulse increase? Check. Shaking in extremities? Check. At any other time the experience might be fascinating, but not now.
Not when someone was alone with her life's work. With Jada's legacy.
Quietly as she could, Netta moved off her bed and picked up the steel bar that she kept in easy reach. BlueGene hadn't asked why she'd wanted a three-foot length of cold-rolled steel in her genetics lab, and if they'd left her with a bodyguard, she'd never have ordered it in the first place. But a bodyguard was a distraction. If she had someone to talk to, she wouldn't be working. Plopping her down in a city where she didn't speak the language and no one knew her kept her from making friends that might otherwise distract her.
As a scientist, she appreciated the efficiency of their methods. As the subject, she would have preferred a few distractions between the monthly video reports req
uired by BG headquarters. Someone like the man she'd assumed would be her bodyguard. He would definitely have been a distraction, with his broad hands and his solid muscles coiled beneath beautiful, umber skin...
Netta shook her head to clear it. Another time, she could allow herself fantasies. Right now, someone was in the other room, threatening everything she'd done for the last three years. She crept to the door between her room and the lab, dropped low, and crawled out. Looking under the tables, she could see a single pair of work boots jutting out of dark gray cotton pants. Both the boots and the pants had a lived-in quality to them that might as well have had “professional soldier” written up the side. In Mumbai, the front lines of the first corporate war, that could only mean Corporate Services. She had little doubt as to which of the transnational corporates had hired them.
I guess I couldn't fool BlueGene forever. Instead of sorrow, the realization felt freeing, as though, having been caught, she didn't have to pretend any longer. She tensed and slipped between the two rows, heading toward her desktop unit. Her data tablet could have matched the big box for performance, but BlueGene wanted all of her work stored locally on a machine with no network connections. With data theft both simplistic and rampant, she understood the concern.
It also meant that she had no ability to leave the lab, since she could only work while on site. It made the luxury apartment they'd used to lure her to Mumbai a joke. She was too prone to the late-night revelation to risk being away from her lab when inspiration struck. Instead, she’d lived in the spare room attached to her workspace for the last three years. Hardly the lap of luxury, but more efficient by far.
The boots came closer, moving toward her computer. She scampered out from under the table and surged to her feet, using the momentum to swing her weight behind the steel bar. A flash of recognition shot through her, and she loosened her grip, letting the bar slide from her fingers and clatter harmlessly to the floor.
