DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2)

by Andrew Seiple

  “She— I would have given her everything,” he whispered. “Everything.”

  “EXCEPT FREEDOM.”

  He sobbed, weaker now. “Like she had it better somewhere else? She could have lived in luxury for the rest of her life.”

  “WITH HER RAPIST.”

  He shuddered. “Please. God... take the kid and go. Just... please.”

  “SHE WILL. BUT ONE MORE QUESTION, FIRST.”

  “Anything. Anything.”

  “YOUR MEN. WHEN THEY GRABBED MINNA, DID THEY TAKE HER DIRECTLY HERE?”

  “Yes.”

  “IMMEDIATELY AFTER.”

  “I... I... I can’t remember exact...”

  “THINK HARD OR DIE NOW!”

  “It took a day! They called me that day, and then, and then they had to get her quietly through the blockades, and... they brought her home the day after that.”

  “HOME. WHERE YOU KILLED HER.”

  Anya was still as a statue.

  “Yes.” He said, closing his eyes. “She tried to escape with Anya. She got to the outer gate. They didn’t know her, didn’t know she was living here. They, they thought she was an intruder. She died.”

  He opened his eyes, stared at me, no, not at me. At Anya. “And you know what? She didn’t cry. Not a bit.” He sounded both freaked out and proud, simultaneously. “Daddy’s little girl.” He smiled, raising a shaking, bloody hand. “Daddy’s little girl.”

  “ONE LAST QUESTION.”

  “Hah? Hah.... uh...” He was going into shock. I slapped his face.

  “ONE LAST QUESTION. WHERE WAS HER ROOM? WHERE WAS MINNA’S ROOM?”

  “The... the large one at the end of the hall. Up-upstairs.”

  The sound of whirring filled the air. Color Guard’s first responders. The senator glanced up, smiled. “Now you’ll ha-have to let me go. You’ll—”

  I shot him with a particle beam at full charge and spread. When I was done, there was a smoking hole through every room left in the floor in a direct line west, several burning trees beyond, and a pair of feet with smoking stumps of legs attached. The rest of the senator was sprayed over the scenery to my west.

  Anya hugged my leg, and I gathered her up. Forty seconds until the Color Guard reached me. Ten more than I needed.

  “HOLD ON TIGHT,” I told Anya.

  And I set the date for two days after Minna’s capture, and activated my time machine.

  I’d wondered why my future self had given this to me. But after Arachne told me of how Minna had died, I didn’t wonder at all.

  Purple sparks rose about me, flaring more and more as the room seemed to shiver. I watched, fascinated, as a pattern built itself out of tachyon flare and photons bent in ways they were never meant to go. I watched, my mind spinning as I pondered the effects I was seeing, glorying in the sheer science of it.

  I doubted I could duplicate this just from the visual effects and readings I was getting. But given time, a budget, and enough experimentation, I rather thought I might be able to learn a few more things about chronological physics if I applied myself.

  Time for that later. Literally if it worked out. Now was the time for killing, and saving. I’d get one shot at this.

  I warped into a quiet sunroom, with nobody in sight. It was still the middle of the night. Good.

  I triggered my thermal vision, peered through the walls, then peered up. The room at the end of the hall should be the one. Sure enough, there was someone sleeping there. A tall someone. I curled into a ball around Anya, who hugged me harder.

  WHAM!

  Through the ceiling.

  WHAM!

  Through the wall.

  WHAM!

  Through a surprised guard, sent crashing against the far wall in a spray of blood with bonebreaking force.

  WHAM!

  And through the last wall, into a large bedroom. And there, sitting bolt upright in a large bed, literally held to it with handcuffs, was a blonde figure with a hard look in her eyes.

  “Mommy!” Anya yelled. I tossed her on the bed, and whirled around. Nodded as I recalibrated my thermal vision, and tied it to my targeting systems.

  Ten searing blasts of gold light later, the structural integrity of the mansion was slightly compromised, and everyone else in the other rooms was a shredded pile of meat.

  Everyone else, save for one person.

  “MINNA.” I said, reaching over and snapping the handcuffs.

  “Dire. Thank you!” She said, rolling out of bed. “We have to leave. Quickly.”

  “NOT YET.” I said. “FIRST SHE HAS TO KILL A MAN FOR THE SECOND TIME.”

  “What is this you say?” She asked, but I was already in motion, shoulder-checking the door, bursting it from its hinges. Across the way the bedroom door opened, and the senator peered, looking like an aged turtle in his fright and shock, as I charged down the hall at him.

  “SHE IS YOUR END!” I roared, and grabbed him, as he struggled and screamed. “WE’LL MAKE THIS QUICK—“

  “No.” Minna’s voice echoed through the hall.

  We stopped. Looked to her.

  “Anya, go inside the room,” she said, and pushed Anya through a door... but Anya wouldn’t let go. Anya was crying.

  “What... what is this?” The senator blustered. “Who are you?”

  “AH, YOUR MEN DIDN’T BRIEF YOU YET. OOPS.” I said. “THEIR BAD.”

  “This is crazy! Leave at once, and let my family be.”

  “Family.” Minna said, and there was such venom in her tone that we both fell silent. We watched as she shut Anya into a bathroom, and locked it behind her. Then she moved down the hall, face a mask of coldness.

  The senator stared at her, and trembled as she approached. “Minna, please. This is crazy.”

  Minna paused before she got to him, turned and vanished into one of the upstairs rooms.

  “And you! You know that Color Guard will be here in minutes. There’s no escape. I don’t know what you were thinking.”

  Minna came out of the doorway, with a golf club in her hand.

  “A GOLF CLUB?” I asked. “DIRE WOULD HAVE GONE WITH A BASEBALL BAT, BUT HEY, YOUR CHOICE.”

  “Minna!” He said. “Go back to your room! It’s not too late!”

  Minna moved in, stopped a few feet away. Looked up to my mask, towering above. “Hold him?” She said.

  I nodded.

  “Minna! No! For the love of god!”

  I used the time to hack into the mansion’s network and erase their security logs. Best to avoid paradoxes, I thought.

  By the time she was done, we were both splattered in blood, and she was crying. She wanted to keep going past his death, but I heard the whirring in the air, and knew it was time to go. It took seconds to retrieve Anya, seconds more to leave the estate and find a quiet patch of road and hug them tight, and no time at all to set my time machine to return to the present day.

  I wondered what I would find? Would I arrive to find myself in a prison cell? My friends dead? All my hard work undone?

  I doubted it, but I couldn’t be sure. Time travel was a risk, but after what Arachne had told me about Minna’s capture, torture, and death, well... I had to try.

  I wondered if this was what heroes felt like.

  Then I remembered the sound of the golf club as Minna killed her tormentor, and I grinned a vicious smile. No, no this wasn’t at all what heroes felt like.

  This was better.

  This was right.

  The road was as empty six months later as it had been when we left, and the van was in the same place. In the wee hours of the morning we departed, driving back east. I checked the news feeds as we went, and was heartened to see that nothing had really changed, as far as I could see. It had been tempting to do more, but not while Minna and Anya’s lives were on the line.

  I stopped at an All-Mart along the way, got them some clothing that wasn’t nightgowns and a week’s worth of food. While they changed, I poked around with a burner phone, found what I
was looking for.

  “What now?” Minna asked when I returned to the van.

  “Arbor Haven Vacation Cabins.” I showed her the image on the phone’s tiny screen. “Icon City’s finest vacation getaways. You’ve got Cabin Sixteen, all by itself on the northern end of Lake Silence.”

  “We are to live there?”

  “For now. Dire’s in the middle of an operation. If it goes well, she’ll show back up for you. If it doesn’t, then you’ll want to move on after a few weeks.” I peeled a wad of bills out of my pocket. “This should cover unexpected expenses.”

  Minna studied me, her face as blank and cold as it had ever been. But her eyes told stories that the casual observer wouldn’t see. “I want to help.”

  “Help Anya.” I said. “Keep yourself safe. That is how you’ll help.” I drew a shuddering breath, held back the tears that threatened at the corner of my eyes. “Dire won’t lose either of you, ever again.”

  And then she was hugging me, and I was crying into her flannel shirt, and it was a messy scene for a while as Anya hugged the both of us and wailed.

  After a few hours I dropped them off at the cabin, and found my way back to the power station. Martin and Vorpal were waiting.

  “There you are!” He seemed upset. “The hell you mean, back in a day or two?”

  I raised a hand as he started in on me. “Minna.” I watched Martin’s objections die on his lips.

  Vorpal crossed her arms. “What?”

  “Friend of ours. You found her? She okay?”

  “Yes. Now, anyway. She died. Used the time machine to bring her back, grabbed Anya at the same time.”

  He smiled, and sagged down onto his cot.

  Vorpal wasn’t so pleased. “Both jumps?”

  “Yes. No other way to do it.” Not one that didn’t risk paradox, conflict with the Color Guard, or trouble of an unforeseen nature.

  “Hm. I hope we do not need them later.” Vorpal shook her head. “But dead friends are a good reason, I suppose.”

  “She outside?” Martin asked.

  “No. In a safe place. If we die or are captured in the assault, then she won’t face any repercussions.”

  I'd burnt up a time machine and a priceless favor to save her. Be damned if she got dragged into this mess with us and got squished by a kaiju or whatever.

  “That’ll do.” Martin said. “Aight. So what’s the plan?”

  I grinned, as I ascended the staircase. “Give her a few hours with the supercomputer, and we should be ready to go.”

  CHAPTER 14: INFILTRATION

  “Life is difficult when your power has no defensive application. You must worry about things that luckier heroes and villains do not care about. Any person with a gun has a chance to kill you, if you are slow.”

  --Quote attributed to Vorpal, independent mercenary and supervillain.

  It was muggy and hot as hell inside the power station. July’s heat had reached full swing, and what had been a reasonably safe haven last night showed its problems in the high heat of noon. This added a bit of incentive to set up the supercomputer... after I got it up and running, and the coolant sinks activated, they cooled the room a good ten degrees. Martin sighed in relief, and curled up next to one as I worked.

  “Just like a dog or a cat,” Vorpal snickered.

  “Shut up,” Martin grumbled without malice. “Not my fault I’m bigger than you. I sweat more.”

  “I know. The stench has been inescapable.” She’d been rather sweaty and ripe herself, but I held my tongue, unwilling to risk their ire turning upon me. I had more important things to do, anyway. Now that I’d used the Universal remote to subvert the local camera networks and edit us out of them, it was time to get hacking.

  It didn’t take long to reconfigure my wave ports, and set up a new profile for the supercomputer’s Grid access, and then shield it behind a wall of misdirection and ECM. After that, the minutes slid away like water down a drain as I tapped my fingers in air, using the AR interface to direct my prowl through Morgenstern Incorporated’s network. The reachable parts of it, anyway.

  Martin and Vorpal watched for a while, before they got bored. Real hacking was nothing like the movies, and without my boosted comprehension, they had no chance of reading the words that made up the codes and protocols that scrolled by at incredible speed. Vorpal wandered outside to get some air, and Martin lay back against the concrete, playing a game on his phone.

  After perhaps twenty minutes I grunted and stood up, stretched the kink out of my back. “Well. Good news and bad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’ve got our way in, but there’s no way we’ll remain undetected for long. Go get Vorpal please, and Dire will step you both through the plan...”

  Two hours later, we were driving the van through Grand Avenue in the heart of Downtown, navigating the early morning traffic. A trip to All-Mart for a few supplies, and a quick stop at a no-tell motel for a shower had given us all the preparation we needed. Well, no, that wasn’t quite accurate. It had gotten us all the preparation that we could afford. This was still going to be dicey.

  “Ready for your meeting, Fräulein Müller?” I asked Vorpal.

  She just grinned. The bulk of our loose money had gone toward the business suit she was wearing; off the rack, but still good quality.

  “Yah. Ninety percent of most marketing is bullshit. I should be able to fake it until we’re ready to move.” I’d found a conference room that was a day behind on their security patching, and exploited the hell out of the weakness, riding it all the way to about ten assorted minor executive gridmail accounts. By the end of my hackfest I’d rescheduled a European affiliate’s meeting from two weeks later to today, here and now. The deception wouldn’t last long, but it wouldn’t need to do so. All it had to do was get her in the building, a floor above the main security office.

  For my own part, I was wearing a simple brown pair of coveralls. I had my contacts in, the subvocal rig tucked under my hair, and the universal remote in one pocket. The taser was concealed at the small of my back, but I had nothing else as far as gadgets went. I did have my phone, but that really didn’t count. The other toys were stored in the armor, which occupied one corner of the van.

  My mask was set into the armor. For the first time in a very long while, I wouldn’t have it on or with me. I was a little nervous about that.

  “Aight, here’s the dropoff,” Martin said, pulling to a stop. We couldn’t drop Fräulein Müller off at the front door. Going by her profile she was more of a limo person than someone who’d show up in a van.

  “Wish me luck, hm?” Her smile hid nervousness, and I smiled back.

  “You’ve got this.”

  “Of course I do, you’ve got the hard part.”

  I shrugged. “From what Dire’s seen, there aren’t many easy parts in this business.”

  She slipped out the door and was gone into the crowd, heading towards our objective.

  “Ten bucks says she tries to kiss you when we’re done.” Martin said, smirking.

  “You think so?” It would fit the romantic comedy tropes that I’d observed.

  “Not too hot on the idea?” He started the van back up, drove to the next dropoff point.

  “Honestly not sure. Would be a bad idea to get involved with her either way until we are no longer business partners. Most things Dire’s read on that matter seem to indicate that romancing people you work with causes major problems.”

  “Ah.” He started to say something, shook his head.

  I looked at him. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what?”

  “Forget it. Let’s just get the job done, yeah? Get paid.”

  I didn’t have time to pry it out of him, so I shrugged. “All right. Let her off here.”

  After the van pulled away, I was left on the curb alone to mingle with the morning’s pedestrian traffic, staring up at Morgenstern’s corporate headquarters. Forty stories tall, one of Icon’
s most major employers. Towards the top, private airship docks studded the building, a few with aircars ready and waiting for their owners to be done with the day’s business. Morgenstern was one of the city’s big tech firms, one that had survived the nineties boom and bubble, and come out stronger for it with the consumption of several rivals.

  And like any huge business, while the main part of it was pretty well secured, there was far too much work in the day-to-day business to protect everything that went on in that building. Case in point: the janitorial staff. They went with the lowest-bid contract, a low-rated freelance company called Bud’s Scrubbers. Bud didn’t even provide his employees with uniforms. Instead he set a dress code, and made his people pay for the uniforms out of their own pockets.

  After today I rather thought he might change that policy.

  I entered through a service door, flashing my false ID at the checkpoint. The guard looked it over, compared the picture of “Shaundi Saint” to my smiling face. I’d added Shaundi to the work roster for today’s shift, transferring her in from one of Bud’s more remote contracts.

  “New hire, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good luck,” the guard said, buzzing me through.

  “Thanks.” He didn’t respond, already turning his attention back to the monitors.

  Ten minutes later I was signing out my first janitorial cart, with an overweight, balding supervisor who chuckled as he scribbled down one lousy job after another on my clipboard. His name tag said Curtis, and he was a dick.

  “Okay, that should do it, Shaundi. So on to the afternoon stuff. After you get done with the restrooms on Floor Eight, then we’ve got a work order to re-grease the elevator cables on number five, so you’ll need to check out a climbing belt for that one. Here’s a pamphlet on how to wear the things.”

  I took the instructions in silence, which he felt the need to fill with more blathering. “Nothing major, just hold the flashlight for the technician until he okays them, then slather a few buckets on them with the brush. Oh, and don’t breathe in that stuff too much, it’s carcinogenic. Also it doesn’t come out if you stain your uniform so you’ll have to buy a new one if you’re not careful. Figure you’ll be off by eight if you’re quick. I’m out the door at four so don’t call me with anything after that. Got it?”