by Robyn Bachar
She cleared her throat. “Good. We need to move fast, but warn me if you can’t keep pace. Think you’ll be able to shoot once we get you a firearm?”
He nodded. “Won’t be scoring any headshots, but I’ll manage.”
“Got it. Drop the bottle and let’s go.”
Ryder did as ordered, dropping a plastic spray bottle poked full of holes into a bucket filled with a chemical soup. The holes would ensure that the bottle’s contents seeped out slowly, giving them enough time to be far away before the chemical reaction exploded.
Jiang opened the door and headed toward the lift. She frowned as she debated the risk of being trapped in the lift versus the difficulty of Ryder attempting the stairs with his injuries. They’d risk the lift. She pressed her palm against the scanner and prayed for aid from any higher power that might be listening, and the doors slid open. Once they were both inside, she keyed it to take them to central data processing.
“This music sucks,” Ryder said.
Jiang blinked and realized he meant the patriotic anthems played throughout the facility. “You learn to tune it out. Eventually you can even sleep through it.”
“It still sucks. So where are you really from?” he asked.
“Earth.”
“Don’t tease me, boss.”
Jiang laughed, then winced at the pounding in her head. She felt like death. They were both going to need some serious medical attention when this was over. She wasn’t sure what they did to “fix” her, but it felt like someone had been digging around in her skull with chopsticks.
“I’m not teasing you,” she said. “I’m from Beijing. But sadly, the whole street-urchin thing means I still don’t know much about the Earther culture you’re addicted to. Sorry.”
“And here I was hoping you’d say you had extensive knowledge of—”
The lift shuddered to a halt as fire alarms began to blare. Jiang scowled. “Shit. I hoped it wouldn’t blow until we were out of the lift. Just once I’d like something to go easy, you know?” She raised her weapon and fired two shots into the lift’s control panel. They both cringed at the loud noise of gunfire in an enclosed space, but Jiang didn’t have time to complain about the ringing in her ears. She grabbed the panel and pried it off to reveal the mechanisms inside.
“Be easier if I had a knife.” Jiang pulled two handfuls of wiring free and sorted through the mess to find the right combination of colors.
“Knew I forgot to bring something,” Ryder said.
She separated out a bundle of green and yellow wires. “It’s okay. I forgive you. Though really it should be me asking for forgiveness. I got us into this mess.”
“Nah. I should’ve talked some sense into you in the marketplace.”
“I wouldn’t have listened. They used the perfect bait.”
“Is she really your daughter?”
“No. Never had any kids.”
The lift lurched and began moving in the wrong direction. Jiang used the ragged edge of the panel’s cover to slice the wires in half. She cursed as the sparking wires zapped her fingers, and the lift screeched in protest and stopped.
“It’s locked down now,” she said. “We need to climb up to the next level and hoof it from there.”
“Climb?” Ryder raised his stump with an exasperated sigh.
“Just one level. You’ve got this, Chief.” Jiang poured sincerity in her voice, but she was worried. The man was barely walking, and now he’d have to climb a ladder one-handed. “I’d offer to carry you, but...”
“Yeah.” Ryder smiled sheepishly and blushed. Jiang tried to remember if she’d ever seen him blush before, but her head throbbed as it tried to reconcile her old and new memories.
Later. Think later. Focus on the mission now.
They popped the top of the lift and climbed on top of it. Jiang manually locked the brakes in place so the car wouldn’t zoom up and squash them while they climbed.
“You go first,” she said.
Ryder shook his head. “I’ll slow us down.”
“Arguing will slow us down. You go first. If you fall, I can catch you.”
Ryder simply shot her a skeptical look, and she placed her hands on her hips.
“Fine. I won’t catch you,” she said. “But I will ogle your ass while you climb. Now get moving.” Jiang smacked said ass for emphasis, and Ryder’s eyes widened.
“Yes, ma’am.”
It took him a few tries to determine the ideal technique for hauling himself up with one hand and a variety of injuries, but he made slow progress. Jiang followed behind, every muscle in her body tense as she listened for the sound of a slipped grip or unsteady footing. Did Security know where they were? Or had the lifts stopped because of the fire alarm and been recalled to one location as a safety precaution? Jiang hoped for the latter. It would give them more time to access the data network if security wasn’t searching for them yet.
Ryder pulled himself onto the ledge outside the lift doors on the next level. His skin glistened with sweat and he was breathing heavily, but he’d made it. Jiang dabbed at his forehead with the sleeve of her stolen coverall.
“Good job. And nice ass,” she said. Ryder smiled, though the expression was pained. “Wait here. I’m going to get us some weapons.”
“Negative, boss. I’m good to go.” He struggled to stand, and she gently nudged him until he sat down again.
Jiang knelt at his side. “No you’re not. Take a breather. I’ll be right back.”
Ryder frowned. “I’m supposed to have your six.”
Jiang grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “And you’ve done a great job. It’s my turn to take care of you. Got it?”
“Don’t like it, but I got it.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Be fast. Be safe.”
Jiang nodded. She rose and pulled the lever to manually open the doors. Pistol raised, she stepped through and scanned the corridor for targets, but it was empty. She checked the directory—the floor they were on was a data analysis center. Perfect. Lots of machines, very few personnel. Good for avoiding civilian casualties, though anyone who worked for the KGB could hardly be called a civilian.
Jiang hurried down the hallway. Every floor in the building had an armory locker in case of an Alliance attack—despite the fact that the Alliance had never directly attacked the Soviet Union in the centuries the two superpowers had hated each other. The area was empty when she reached the locker, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she thanked Soviet paranoia for her good fortune. Her palm scan opened the locker, and she whistled low.
“Jackpot.”
Jiang strapped the body armor over her medical gown. It wasn’t much—a chest guard, and thigh and shin guards that looked like they were designed to repel fastballs instead of bullets, but it was better than nothing. She loaded up on ammo and guns, but sadly there were no grenades. Ah, well—beggars couldn’t be choosers. She traded Valentin’s pistol for a higher-caliber weapon, and headed back to Ryder.
Jiang turned the first corner and nearly ran smack into a patrol of six security officers. She shot one through the throat out of pure reflex before the men had time to react. Bastards were armored and she wasn’t likely to get another free shot at a vulnerable point, so she switched to hand-to-hand.
Jiang struck the closest guard in the jaw with the butt of her pistol with a resounding crack of metal against his helmet. Shit, she was rusty. Too much time spent with her ass in the pilot’s chair and not enough time spent in the Mombasa’s gym, but even on her worst day she was still better than this sorry lot. They probably spent all their time behind a desk.
She bobbed and weaved, jabbed and kicked, felling one opponent after another, but she was slowed by the pounding in her skull. With only one officer left she overcompensated for a swing, unbalanced herself and fell. The
officer smiled, sure he had her in his sights, but his victory was overshadowed by the smack of a fire suppression cylinder to his head.
“Got bored,” Ryder said.
Jiang breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Good timing.”
“I thought so. Are any of those for me?” He nodded toward the arsenal strapped to her body. “Though the blunt force trauma thing is kinda cool. It has catch phrase potential. Like, ‘You’ve been extinguished.’”
“Negative on the catch phrases.” She handed him an assault rifle and a pistol.
He looked down at the officer he’d just walloped and eyed him speculatively. “How tall do you think he is?”
“Too short for you to fit in his armor. Sorry, Chief.”
Ryder shook his head. “Damn. What next?”
“This is an analysis center, so it’s a good location to access the network. We just need to find an office with a terminal.”
“And a desk full of data sticks.”
One of the fallen security guards groaned and twitched, and Jiang raised her pistol to finish him off with a bullet to the head.
Ryder knocked her hand aside. “Whoa, what are you doing?”
“He’s a hostile.”
He stared at her, horrified. “Since when do we kill people who are already downed?”
She blinked in confusion. Her training demanded that she leave as few witnesses as possible and neutralize the possibility that hostile troops could recover and rejoin the fight.
“These men wouldn’t hesitate to kill us,” she said.
“Which is the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. We’re good guys, boss. Remember?” Ryder watched her with cautious hope as her mind whirled with a storm of memories of serving aboard the Mombasa. Captain Nyota insisted on violence as a last resort, and killing only when there was no other recourse.
“Right.” Jiang nodded slowly. “Got it. But I’m not sorry about ending Agent Petrov.”
“Agreed. That asshole had it coming.”
Jiang kicked the groaning guard in the head, and he fell unconscious. “He’ll live. Let’s go.”
They moved down the hallway and Jiang checked the signage of each door for something that would work. Mostly server rooms—they could use one to directly access the network, but as Ryder said, they needed something to download the data to.
“Here, this’ll work.” Jiang shot the lock to an office and the door slid open. The room was empty, and she sighed in relief. She didn’t want to shoot some poor analyst caught at his desk after Ryder’s reminder that her KGB training didn’t correspond with the life she’d lived over the past eight years.
“I’ll cover you.” Ryder positioned himself in the open doorway to watch the hallway while she worked.
Jiang sat behind the desk and frowned at the photo next to the vid screen. A woman and two children waved at the camera. Very domestic, and eerily reminiscent of the fake photos Valentin had used to dress the apartment Sasha had lured her to. She flipped the photo down so she didn’t have to see it, and then yanked the desk’s drawers open in search of a spare data stick.
The fire alarms suddenly cut off. “That’s not good,” Ryder said.
“Don’t worry about it.” Jiang unearthed a blank stick and plugged it into the terminal. “I really wish we had Maria’s programs right now.”
“Can you access the network without them?”
“Me? No. Agent Petrov? Yes.” She produced the key card she had looted from his body and plugged it into the terminal. She started a search for Dr. Koslov and any information connected to him and Project Compliance.
Ryder chuckled and then grimaced in pain, and Jiang’s stomach twisted. She knew the interrogation techniques he’d endured—she was trained in them. She squeezed her eyes shut to hide from the horrendous images that assaulted her. It was the stuff of nightmares, but these were memories. Her memories. She was a monster.
“Boss?”
She opened her eyes and stared at Ryder. Would he still consider her a friend if he knew the things she’d done? A lover?
“Hey,” he said. “Focus.”
Jiang took a deep breath. “Right. Got it.”
A few files popped up in reply to the query, but further searches were blocked by warnings of insufficient clearance. Bastard. She should’ve known Valentin wasn’t nearly as important as he thought he was.
“I’ve got a few things on Compliance, but the good stuff is a no-go. I have a location on Koslov. I’m grabbing everything related to him that I can.”
“Good. How far to the hangar bay?”
Jiang grabbed the data stick and shoved it in her pocket. “A hell of a lot closer now.”
The corridors were empty, suspiciously so, as they headed to the hangar bay. They should have encountered more security patrols, or a drone or two. It worried Jiang, but she didn’t have time to think about it. They used the stairs despite the risk of being easily pinned down between levels. Better to be stuck in a stairwell than trapped in a lift car.
Ryder whistled low when they emerged into the hangar bay, and she silently agreed. The cavernous facility housed an impressive array of ships at the ready for the KGB’s use—single-pilot fighter ships, cargo haulers, troop transports, fast attack vehicles. It was pilot heaven, and Jiang grinned.
The hangar bay seemed empty at first, but after a few steps Jiang spotted a single figure standing between them and freedom.
“Mama?” Sasha said.
Jiang wavered and her pistol shook in her hands. Again she was pulled in opposite directions by two different realities, but she forced a calming breath. Sasha was a fiction, and the girl before her was too young to have undergone the implant procedure and be consumed by a cover program.
“Nice try, Cadet Stein,” Jiang said.
The girl shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”
“Poor word choice.” Ryder raised his pistol in emphasis, but Cadet Stein merely smiled. “And Stein? Really? Another awful spy name. You really ought to have a talk with the KGB.”
Jiang snorted. “Yeah, I’ll put that on my To Do list.”
“Does she at least have a cool first name? Like Venom or Scarlett?”
“Nope,” Jiang said. “It’s Helen.”
“I happen to like Helen,” the cadet said.
“And if you want to continue liking it, you’d better step aside,” Jiang said.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Agent Kwan. Would you shoot an unarmed child?” She raised her hands to accentuate that she wasn’t resisting.
“I’m willing to bet you’re armed,” Jiang said. “And you’re a lot of things, but a child isn’t one of them. I know. I used to be you.”
Child. My child.
No. That’s not a child, it’s a weapon.
She’s not a weapon yet. She still has a chance.
“Used to be.” Helen smiled. “But now you’re old and slow.”
“She’s stalling,” Jiang murmured to Ryder. “Waiting for backup.”
“Orders?” he asked.
Whoever sent Helen here was banking on Jiang’s memories of her daughter keeping her distracted long enough for a team to arrive. They wanted Jiang alive, otherwise Helen would’ve sniped her when she walked in. Or they figured Xiaoling would drop Helen, and considered the kid an acceptable loss.
Well, if the KGB wasn’t going to miss her...
Jiang put a round in Helen’s shoulder, and the girl dropped.
“Holy shit.” Ryder gaped at Jiang.
“She’s alive. We’re taking her with us. Watch the entrance for reinforcements.”
“Wait, what?”
“Cover me,” she ordered Ryder. Her tone snapped him out of his confusion and he turned and scanned for approaching hostiles.
Jiang kept her weapon trained on Helen as she approached. If Helen had endured the same training she had, one bullet wouldn’t keep her down for long.
Helen pushed herself to her feet. “You shot me.”
“It’s for your own good,” Jiang said. “Now be a good girl and come with Mama. We’re going on a family vacation.”
“You’re crazy.” Helen settled into a fighting stance.
“Probably.”
Jiang fired a second shot, aiming for Helen’s leg, but the girl lunged out of the way. She slapped Jiang’s gun out of her hands and the weapon skidded away under a cargo ship. Jiang yelped—Helen was fast like an angry viper, and Jiang had been living a civilian life over the past few years. She struck Jiang in the gut and knocked the wind out of her. Jiang barely dodged a punch that would’ve laid her flat as gunfire erupted from the entrance to the hangar bay. She hoped Ryder had taken cover—the area was littered with cargo containers that a person could hide behind, but trusting one to protect you from gunfire was like Russian roulette. Anything in a KGB facility was potentially deadly.
Jiang aimed a punch at Helen’s bullet wound, and Helen howled and fell. Jiang followed up with a blow to the jaw that knocked the girl out cold. With a grunt Jiang grabbed her and threw her over her shoulder like a sack of grain.
“This way,” she called to Ryder. He was exchanging fire with a squad positioned at the main entrance. “We’re leaving.”
“Give.” He holstered his weapon and shouldered Jiang’s burden. “You shoot, I’ll carry.”
“Got it. We’re heading for that patrol ship.” She laid down covering fire as they hurried to the ship in question, a sleek, shiny vessel meant to house a small crew as they kept the borders safe.
They charged up the ramp and Jiang slapped the controls to raise it. “Med pod is that way. Stow her and sedate her. And restrain her.”
Ryder didn’t ask questions, and Jiang ran for the cockpit. The ship was a beauty—top-of-the-line, military-grade hardware, and she was fueled and prepped to fight at a moment’s notice. Jiang took the pilot’s seat and strapped in.
She kicked the engines on and they purred like a kitten, and she fell a bit in love. She flipped switches and punched buttons as she hurried through the preflight checklist, and everything was green. She picked a point in the middle of nowhere and plugged it into the nav computer to let it chew on the calculation. They would have to stop somewhere to dig out all the ship’s spyware before they returned to the Stryke Zone.
