The Operative : A Division 13 Story

by Orlando A. Sanchez

  “No windows and no other exits apparent.” He tried using his gaze or was in serious gastric distress—I couldn’t tell which—and scanned the area. “I don’t see any other way out.”

  “Do you really think Bruce would isolate himself on a floor with just one exit?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe he’s not scared of anything and doesn’t feel he needs another exit?”

  “Good point, but Bruce isn’t stupid. There’s a door at the end of the hallway over there.”

  He missed it because wards and runes kept it hidden. Once he practiced his gaze, finding hidden areas would become second nature.

  “Are trolls scared of anything? Is there something worse than a troll?”

  It was actually a good question. Trolls feared next to nothing, being close to the top of the supernatural food chain. I made sure I had access to Thorn as we faced the next door. Jude did the same with his weapon and we entered Bruce’s office.

  It was a spacious affair, giving Bruce ample room in which to move around. A large mahogany desk sat on one side of the office. Behind the desk, under recessed track lighting, hung a large print written in the Old Tongue, something about the superiority of the supernatural or some other nonsense. The polished wood floor reflected the dim lighting. Two large chairs sat near the center of the floor and opposite the redwood desk.

  Two more ogres, one in each corner, stood glaring at us as we approached. Bruce was sitting behind the desk reading some report when we walked in. He leaned back in what had to be one of the strongest desk chairs on the planet and squinted at us.

  “You’re still alive.” He pulled on the lit cigar in his mouth and blew smoke. “I thought the kobolds would have cut you down to size.”

  “Cute.” I drew Thorn and sat in one of the chairs. Jude remained standing keeping an eye on the ogres. “They tried to make my partner here a Viennese choir boy.”

  “Assaulting an operative agent—”Jude began.

  “He knows.” I raised a hand. “He doesn’t care.”

  “I like you, which is why I’m not going to let”—he rested his elbows on the desk and pointed to the corner ogres—“these two rip your arms off and beat your partner to death with them.”

  “That’s generous of you. Here’s my counter offer.”

  I raised Thorn and fired, dropping the two ogres, and crossed to the desk, placing Thorn against Bruce’s forehead before they had a chance to hit the floor. A few seconds later their bodies crashed to the ground and the ogres from outside rushed into the office in shredding mode.

  Bruce stared at me and raised an eyebrow as the dead ogres dissolved. “Impressive. Does your little gadget make you invincible, too?”

  Jude faced the door, ready to fire.

  “Wait,” Bruce barked and raised a hand. The ogres stopped at the door. “Downstairs, now.”

  The ogres turned around and stepped outside.

  “You just cost me a fortune in security. Ogres don’t come cheap.”

  I pulled back my sleeve and showed him my techbrace.

  “Cait, how long until execution of fire and fury protocol?”

  The counter came up on the display with the numbers ticking backwards.

  “Forty-five minutes and ten seconds until execution,” she purred. “Shall I disengage?”

  “You do this, you burn with me,” Bruce growled.

  “Standby, Cait.” I looked at Bruce. “You have a choice to make here. I can enlighten you by opening your third eye with my gun, reduce your club to ashes with you in it, or you can tell me who the buyer is.”

  “You have no idea what you’re asking here. You need to let this go. Walk away while you still can.”

  “Or what?”

  An explosion rocked the lower levels of the Abyss. I looked to the side for a split-second as the vibration shook the door. I snapped my head back at the sound of splintering wood.

  Bruce drove an uppercut through the desk and connected with my chin, sending me sailing across the office. I slid on the smooth floor and collided with wall headfirst.

  “You’re getting sloppy.”

  The floor tilted in several directions. I tried and failed to get a bead on him. Bruce examined the pieces of wood that vaguely resembled a desk.

  “Two ogres and a desk. I had that one custom built.”

  “Shoot…shoot him,” I slurred as he knocked Thorn from my hand. “Jude, shoot him.”

  Bruce crouched down and brought his face level to mine. He glanced over at the frozen Jude who was aiming his gun in our general direction. Jude’s hand was shaking enough to make me reconsider the order. With my luck, he’d end up hitting me instead of Bruce.

  “Let me guess, standard issue S&W SD9,” Bruce said, grabbing me by the shirt. “Nine millimeter parabellums, probably runed. Did you forget what kind of troll I was? Your partner may as well be holding a water pistol.”

  I looked over at the petrified Jude. “Nevermind, put your gun down. He’s right. Your ammo will only piss him off.”

  Jude lowered the gun, but didn’t holster it.

  Bruce buried a massive fist in my abdomen that forced the air out of my lungs. My brace chirped, flashed red, and released a medkit into my blood stream, dealing with the damage.

  “I warned you to leave it alone. You’ve cost me my club.”

  “It’s just…it’s just the NYTF,” I said between gasps. “They must have set something off.”

  Bruce looked at the door, turned, and focused on me again. He lifted me effortlessly from the ground and threw me across the office and into the pile of wood that was his desk moments earlier.

  “You think your little fire and fury protocol means anything to these people?” he said, pointing at the door. “They won’t be here once it launches. These people are phantoms. I need to get out of here.”

  He sounded scared, which turned my blood to ice. Trolls don’t feel fear, they induce it in others. If he was running, it meant that whatever was coming was worse than a troll.

  There were few things on this planet worse than a troll.

  He stepped up to the print written in the Old Tongue, removed it with a swipe, and placed his hand on a panel. A recessed keypad appeared a few seconds later. He punched in a code and a teleportation circle formed in the corner next to where his desk had sat.

  “The name,” I groaned. “Give me the name.”

  I tried to sit up and found myself pinned to the ground. He stepped on my chest on his way to the circle, paused, and looked down at me.

  “Get off him,” Jude said, raising his gun again. “Now, or I’ll shoot. I don’t care if the rounds just piss you off. Get off my partner.”

  Bruce moved his foot with a grin, nodded and headed to the circle. He turned to look at me and started to fade out.

  “Get out of here while you can. They will sanitize the club and reduce it to rubble. That includes you and the rookie. It would be a shame if you died before I got a chance to kill you.”

  I got unsteadily to my feet, picking up Thorn as I approached the circle.

  “The name.”

  He was almost gone. “You don’t want it, trust me.”

  I raised Thorn. Negation rounds had been known to disrupt all kinds of magic, even teleportation circles.

  “The name or you get to greet your guests.”

  “Your funeral.” He shook his head. “The humans you’re looking for are long gone. If you really want to track them down, you need to find Delilah.”

  He disappeared. His words punched me harder than any of his blows. I stood there dazed while a firefight erupted below us.

  “It can’t be. Delilah is dead.”

  SEVEN

  “RONIN.” I HEARD Jude, but his voice was far away. “Ronin!” He grabbed my arm and brought me back. “We need to evac.”

  I shook my head, holstered Thorn, and checked my brace. No internal damage. Bruce was being nice.

  “Cait, scan hostiles and their affiliation,” I said as
we headed to the door. I peeked out and saw the empty hallway. Below us, I could hear the sounds of gunfire.

  I stepped to the mirrored window and looked down. A squad of five men dressed in black combat gear advanced on the NYTF. They moved with lethal precision and I knew the NYTF didn’t stand a chance.

  “Whoever’s down there is good—better than good. I think you’re right. We need to evac, and now.”

  We headed to hidden door at the end of the hallway. I turned and pointed my brace at the wall. With a press of a button, a small disc fired and embedded itself into the wall.

  “Five hostiles, affiliation unknown. Five—correction, four NYTF officers presenting resistance. Correction, three NYTF officers.”

  “Shit. Track beacon.”

  “Acknowledged, beacon located.”

  “Engage fire and fury protocol the moment we are off the premises.”

  “The blast radius of the protocol will place you and your partner in imminent danger.”

  “Do it,” I said, looking for a way to open the door. “Get over here, Padawan and look for a way to open the door.”

  “What’s a Padawan?” he asked, searching the wall. “That sounds ethnic. Is it Indian?”

  For a brief second I considered shooting him for the question. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Were you raised in a cave somewhere? How do you not know what a—?”

  I heard the elevator start to move.

  “Focus on the elevator. I’ll find the door.”

  It took a few more tries before I located the seam to the door. Bruce had it hidden behind a double set of wards and covered with runes. I stepped back and fired Thorn. The negation rounds undid the magic, revealing a large steel door.

  I motioned to Jude and opened the door. We stepped onto a small platform and started to descend as I closed the door quietly behind us. A quick shift of the runes and the door would be invisible from the other side. The platform took us to the basement level. We stood in the center of the dungeon.

  “Initiating…fury…rotcol,” Cait’s voice came over the brace. “Please get…a safe…blast radius.”

  “She must think we’re off the property,” I said, looking down and tapping the brace. “Cait, track my location.”

  Static followed by silence was her response.

  “Off the property? But we’re in the basement,” he said, demonstrating his incredible powers of perception.

  I ignored him and looked around for an exit. I located it at the end of a corridor.

  “Cait, no, we’re in the basement,” I hissed into the brace and looked up at Jude. “We need to run…now!”

  I ran for the exit with Jude behind me. I was a few feet away from the door when the protocol hit and my world exploded.

  EIGHT

  FOR THE SECOND time that day, I looked up into a beautiful pair of green eyes. This time her eyes were angry and Division 13 TAC Ops officers surrounded me with weapons drawn.

  “We really need to stop meeting like this.” I groaned and sat up.

  Luca looked down at me, scowled, and shook her head. I saw something else in her eyes. Was it sadness? Disappointment?

  “Cuff him, secure the area, and get Jude to Haven.”

  “Cuff me?” I said as I extended my arms. There was no point in resisting, yet. One of the TAC Ops came over and secured my wrists with kagome metal quantum cuffs. Impossible to pick or destroy. “What the hell, Luca?”

  I sat on the edge of the crater that used to be the Abyss. The fire and fury protocol was a precise surgical strike capable of destroying a target, like a building, with little damage to surrounding area.

  I looked around and took in the destruction. I saw the bodies of the NYTF officers, but none of the unaffiliated hostiles. Some of the TAC Ops left us, splitting into groups and securing the area. Two of them stayed with Luca, pointing their weapons at me. I saw two of them carry Jude to a waiting ambulance, which sped off silently. I felt a real pang of concern. His training was going so well.

  “How is he?” My head throbbed with a monumental migraine.

  “Critical. We dug his body out of the debris of what used to be the Abyss. What did I tell you? I gave you what I thought was a simple instruction.”

  “Which I followed. I—”

  She held up a finger, shook her head, and pointed.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “A destroyed building.”

  “Do you happen to see, by any chance, the large, ugly body of a troll in the rubble that was the Abyss?”

  “I can explain.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’ll tell you what I do see, Ronin.”

  I looked into the crater and picked out the NYTF uniforms.

  “Dead NYTF.”

  “Collateral damage, lots of it. The one thing I asked you not to cause. Where’s Bruce?”

  “He ported out,” I said with a wince and rubbed my head. “Had a circle in his office.”

  “He ported out while you were in the office? You were with him. You let him port out of the office in front of you?”

  “He caught me off guard. I was stunned. Then the Abyss was attacked by—”

  “Attacked? By whom? We checked the feeds and all surveillance in the area. We only get the NYTF, Bruce, you, and the rookie going in. No one coming out.”

  “There was another group, unknown. Took down the NYTF. They were coming for Bruce.”

  “So you decided what? Fire and fury to destroy everyone?”

  “Bruce was scared of this group or whoever ran it. He used an emergency port.”

  “Why did you accelerate the fire and fury while you were still in the building? Wait, did you say Bruce was scared? Are we talking about the same Bruce? The troll?”

  “Yes, Bruce. The troll. I didn’t accelerate—well, wait, I did. But my brace malfunctioned.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. A sure sign I was heading into pain territory.

  “Your brace malfunctioned?”

  “It released the protocol while we were in the basement. I don’t know if it lost the signal or what.”

  I saw the muscles of her jaw flex in what I called the fandango of fury. I was only seconds away from either a maiming or a visit to Haven. Even the two TAC Ops next to us took a few steps back.

  “You said Bruce was scared,” she said slowly as she took a breath. “What was he, a troll, scared of?”

  “I told you, unknown hostiles were closing on our position. Ask Jude. He can corroborate, he can—”

  “Jude can’t say anything. Critical and unresponsive. You better hope he pulls through.”

  “I do. Shit. I’m telling you, Luca. There was another group there.”

  “This mystery group have a name, markings, anything?”

  “None that I caught, no,” I said quietly. “But Bruce called them phantoms. From what I could see, they were trained to military-level proficiency.”

  “Right.” She nodded and looked at the destruction around us. “You have nothing. Except a lot of dead NYTF, a critically injured partner, and a group of ‘phantoms’ you can’t identify. A group that came in wiped out two squads of NYTF and then, what, beamed out?”

  “I know it looks bad.”

  “Bad? Let me tell you what this looks like. You unleashed a fire and fury after the meeting with your partner, Bruce, went south.”

  “My partner? What? Are you insane?”

  “Bruce refuses to give you your cut of the latest human sale. You argue and threaten to destroy the building. He drops you and ports out before you can stop him. You decide to bury the evidence, literally, accelerate the protocol, and level the Abyss with the rookie inside to tie off loose ends.”

  “You forgot one small detail. I was in the building, too.”

  “Actually no, we found you outside of the building. The rookie was in the building. His techbrace probably saved his life.”

  “What the hell are you smoking? Have you had your coffee yet?”

  She touched her brace
and looked at me.

  “Playback audio file: Ronin.” She looked at me. “I got this once the protocol fired.”

  “Damn it, Bruce, I told you no business in the city. Now, I’ll have Luca and the Division all over my ass.”

  It was my voice. Garbled and staticky, but it was me.

  “She’s your problem. We agreed. You take care of the witnesses and keep Division 13 off our backs for thirty percent. Are you trying to renegotiate?”

  Someone did an excellent voice capture on Bruce. It sounded like a real conversation. A bit stilted, but the flow of speech was spot on, even down to the growl.

  “Where’s my money? I need it now. I can reduce your club to ashes, or I can enlighten you by opening your third eye with my gun.”

  “You may as well be holding a water pistol. Once the deal is done, you get your money, not before. You know how it works, Ronin.”

  It was a conversation between Bruce and me. One that never happened.

  “Voices can be faked, Luca, you know this better than anyone,” I said, shaking my head. “This is a good job though. Someone has serious tech.”

  She pointed to my brace. “Use your VR.”

  I tapped my techbrace. “Cait, voice recognition on audio file just played.”

  “File acknowledged. Voice of Mark Ronin, Division 13 operative. Designation 003. Voice of current owner of the Abyss. Name: Bruce. Species: Troll.”

  “Bullshit, Luca. You know me. I would never—”

  She grew real still and I mentally braced my everything. When Luca hit you, it was usually an earth-shattering blow of cosmic proportions. That’s if she liked you.

  The slap came hard and fast. Constellations bloomed in my vision and spots danced in my eyes as she connected. For a brief second, I was glad it wasn’t a fist. It meant I got to keep all my teeth.

  “How much is thirty percent of human lives worth to you? You piece of scum. I trusted you, Ronin.”

  “I didn’t do this. Ask the rookie, he was there.”

  “You tried to kill your partner and buried a squad of NYTF officers just to cover your tracks?”

  “Bruce gave me a name.” She lifted me up by the armpit and tossed me against the wall like a ragdoll. I hit the wall with enough force to cause my brace to release another medkit.