by Richard Fox
“Yes, Pyr?”
“Is my target where she is supposed to be?” Pyr asked.
“Her name is Eva, and she is watching the city from the balcony. You may enter through her bedroom window and then cut through the kitchen.”
“Thank you, Hades.”
“Unless you want to drop onto the balcony and frighten the poor girl to death,” Hades said in her ear piece.
“She is not a poor girl.”
“You’d be surprised,” Hades said.
The bedroom was decorated with the opulence she expected. The human race was on the verge of extinction and the most powerful people still lived in luxury their subjects could barely comprehend.
Pyr approached through the kitchen and living room and watched her target watch the city with the longing and isolation only a teenage girl could manage.
In time, the girl felt the observation and cautiously came in from the balcony overlooking the neon city far below.
“How did you get into my room?” Eva asked. She slipped inside, curious but also cautious. “Why do you look at me like that?”
The girl, almost a woman, was small. Her blue-blonde hair was thicker and longer than it seemed at first glance. Long limbed and graceful, her skin could have been the ice of glacier or the soul of a white star. Her night shift was nearly translucent, but it was hard to see where fabric ended and hair began.
Why does she have to be one of my people? Pyr thought. There were so few left. To find one of them providing aid to the enemies of Empyrean disturbed her further. Hades would need a re-programming, or a server wipe, for omitting the detail.
“That is not the question that is important,” Pyr said.
“Oh?” The girl assumed an indignant stance, somehow looking both older and more naive at the same time. “What is the important question?”
“Does your father love you?”
Eva surprised her then. Crossing her arms, the girl met her gaze. “Is he here?”
“I believe you have miscalculated,” Hades said.
“Explain,” she said to her ship computer.
“If her father loved her, he would be here. That is what she believes. What kind of celebration did you pass through to get here?” Hades asked.
Pyr cut the link, annoyed.
“Did you bring him? Maybe with a big surprise? My own starship, perhaps, that I might use to leave this prison?” Eva said.
Pyr considered the facts. There had been little need of mortal subtlety for a long time. She killed. What did she care about their emotional state or the reasons they did the things they did?
“Is today your birthday, Eva?”
“You know it is,” Eva said. “If you’re not here to take me up to the ship, then get the hell out.”
Pyr moved forward in a flash of movement, seizing the girl by the throat and lifting her off her feet. When she reached the top of the movement’s arc, she slammed her victim flat on her back.
“Happy birthday, Eva. Welcome to hell.”
The girl grunted in alarm, the sound cut short as air left her lungs. Landing flat was a miserable experience. Pyr remembered it from long ago training.
Air cars passed in the sky far beyond the balcony window. Somewhere above was the FCF Impregnable, with Eva’s father in charge of security and defense.
Pyr looked into the white diamond eyes as they glittered with tears of surprise, betrayal, and pain.
“Your father does not love you. He will not come to save you,” Pyr said. “Unless you scream.”
Hades sighed through her left earphone. “You’re going to hell.”
“Did I program you with a conscience?”
Confused, Eva looked up at Pyr.
“Not you,” Pyr said. The girl stabbed her with guilt, so she squeezed the slim throat to the point of suffocation.
“Do you want me to send the transmission to her father now?” Hades asked.
Pyr released the one-handed stranglehold and sat back on her heels, staring at what she had done.
Eva’s pale chest rose and fell as she gasp for air, rolling onto her side and attempting to scramble away from Pyr. Her ethereal hair writhed with the movement.
Pyr heard the song of the unique hair fibers rubbing together. It was something she had hoped to never experience again, after what she had done to her homeworld.
Not a good sound. Eva’s panic and confusion created a discordant symphony with her crystalline hair fibers.
“Can you hear that, Hades?” Pyr said as she rose to her feet and walked after the retreating teenager.
“I cannot, Pyr. I am a computer. Your biometrics suggest it is alarming to your cognitive state,” Hades said.
Eva made it across the living room floor and tumbled into the depressed area around a fireplace and entertainment cluster. Bounding to her feet, she assumed a good but basic self-defense stance.
“Shall I transmit her final act of desperation?” Hades said. “That would punch the old dad-man in the gut, certainly.”
***
Pyr kept her eyes on Eva, who was proving more resilient than expected. She listened to her computer, but did not respond to its frequent and annoying questions.
Eva retreated around the centerpiece of the entertainment den. She gave ground, but carefully. At every second or third step, the girl looked for where she might go next.
“You’re one of us, aren’t you,” Eva said. “Not one of the imitations my parents hate so much.”
“Parents?” Pyr asked.
Hades answered first. “Her mother has been dead two years.”
“Tell me what you want or get out. I already hate you. You might as well kill me. Could you live like this?” Eva asked.
“Like what?” Pyr asked.
“Locked in this tower. Protected. Lied to,” Eva said.
“I would leave,” Pyr said.
“Easy for you to say.”
“Yes, it is easy for me to say.”
Eva abandoned the defensive stance and stared at Pyr. “I wish I were you and you were me.”
Pyr heard Hades beeping her, grabbing at her attention as AI computers were wont to do.
“Do you want me to connect the images of this scene to our target on the Impregnable? According to our current timeline, we have less than twelve hours to reach the UEF president and destroy him,” Hades said.
“Eva, I am going to call your father,” Pyr said.
The girl shook her head and laughed without humor. “Good luck. Even I can’t call him when the human president is on the ship.”
“When he sees you, I want you to beg,” Pyr said. She was ready for torture, but there were other ways to succeed.
“Go to hell,” Eva said, grabbing a glass from a small table near the main couch and hurling it at Pyr.
Moving her head a finger's width to one side, Pyr avoided the projectile.
“Beg him for help, and I will take you with me,” Pyr said.
Eva stared distrustfully, narrowing her eyes and crossing her arms. “I’m not sure I would like that.”
“You won’t,” Pyr said. “But you will appreciate this life.”
Eva snorted. “Are you going to scare me straight?”
“No,” Pyr said. “I will make you pray for death one way or another, now or later.”
“Who are you?” Eva asked.
Pyr said nothing.
“What are you?”
“I am the reason our race still exists, the price we paid to Empyrean.”
Eva trembled all over and sat down. As soon as she lowered herself, however, fear drove her back to her feet and she fled up to the other side of the main living room. “You are Pyr the Betrayer.”
Anger flared in Pyr’s eyes. Her soul burned in her chest. She reached for her daggers, stopping only when she felt the reassuring hardness of metal.
“I did what needed doing.”
The voice of Hades sounded once more in her earbud, switching from mischievous troublemaker to wise p
eacemaker as was his routine. Whatever made her the most uncomfortable was what her ship’s artificial intelligence did.
“I am not sure where you are going with this course of action,” Hades said.
“She wants to run away. It might as well be with me. Then we both win.”
Eva seemed to have realized Pyr was speaking to the AI. A girl of such wealth and privilege probably had her own virtual assistant. She watched and waited, moving nearer her bedroom where she likely had a safe room or even weapon.
“No one wins,” Hades said.
“Elaborate,” Pyr said.
“There is no elaboration,” Hades said. “It was a complete statement. If you can’t decipher the meaning, there is no help for you. On another topic, however, you realize the girl Eva believes you to be immortal.”
Pyr laughed, darkness resonating a melody in her voice. Thoughts of death and damnation plagued her, but she never shared this with Hades. “Am I so transparent?”
“I am merely transferring information gathered from my observations of your target. When, may I ask, are we going to get to it?” Hades asked.
“I suppose I can torture her later,” Pyr said.
“For the love of the god of sun gods,” Hades said.
“Get dressed, Eva,” Pyr said, motioning to the bedroom.
The girl darted through the doorway.
Pyr followed, confirming the apartment suite did, in fact, have a safe room. She reached the vault door just as it sealed shut and broadcast an alarm throughout the building.
“Hades, please collapse the glass causeway to the penthouse and prepare to evacuate me from Eva’s balcony,” Pyr said. She placed her palm against the locking device and felt for variations in the magnetic undercurrents of atoms.
Eva spoke through the emergency speaker. “You can’t hack this door. It is a self-contained computer powered by localized nuclear fusion.”
“Impressive,” Pyr said. Such technology was far ahead of most mortal races. Miniaturization of fusion plants was a nightmare scenario for most physicists. She suspected the power supply to the safe room was actually a large battery, charged in a larger reactor offsite. To a layman, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
“Impressive, but unfortunate. I serve Empyrean and Empyrean is fusion.” Pyr commanded the locking mechanism to open and smiled at the sound of alloy tumblers falling in a beautiful rhythm of total access.
***
The door rolled sideways, revealing Eva in the midst of a transformation. Gone was the gossamer sleeping gown. A utility belt cinched her tactical jumpsuit. A high quality sidearm hung on one hip. She tightened armored greaves over the boots just before she stood to stare at Pyr.
“God damn you,” Eva said. “Can you just give me a break?”
“The girl has spirit,” Hades said. “You must torture her aggressively.”
Pyr cut the link, hoping against hope it would stay cut until it was time for the ship to pick her up.
“My father will not let you on the Impregnable. He’ll do his duty,” Eva said.
“How sad for you,” Pyr said. She was growing bored. The shock of seeing one of her own people had worn off. Nothing had changed. She could argue with a thousand of her brothers and sisters and none of it would alter the necessity of what she had done and would continue to do.
Her people were alive because she killed whoever Empyrean wanted killed.
“What will you do when we are all dead?” Eva asked.
Pyr stepped back, stunned by the question.
Eva advanced, sliding a series of knives into her belt. “Mortal creatures die,” Eva said. “Even a silly girl like me knows that much. And it isn’t hard to understand that all races perish. A star dies, a star kills, either way the same fate awaits us all. So my question, Pyr the Betrayer, is what will you do when you are truly the last of us?”
“That day has not come,” Pyr said. To her surprise, Hades remained silent when she expected the annoying AI to rub salt in her wounds.
“It will come,” Eva said. “How many races have you ended for Empyrean?”
The question struck like a hammer. She remained standing, but it felt as though the building had jumped under her feet at the words.
“Many,” she answered.
***
Her decision was not easy, but it was quick and decisive. She understood there would be consequences, but underestimated the speed of Empyrean’s response.
“Are you going to kill me?” Eva said.
“No, but there will be others. So you must come with me if you want to stay alive,” Pyr said.
Eva nodded. “My father will be angry.”
“Wait until he sees what I did to your guards,” Pyr said.
Eva’s eyes widened.
Pyr took stock of her situation and predicted where the backup assassin would come from. She had isolated the penthouse by dropping the glass causeway that connected it to the main building, but someone even half as skilled as Pyr would have no trouble climbing the tower building or parasailing in under the cover of night.
“Is that your ship?” Eva asked as she stared over Pyr’s shoulder.
Without looking for the arrow-shaped stealth ship, Pyr bolted forward, crashing Eva into the depressed lounge area as large caliber projectiles shredded the sliding glass wall to the balcony. It was partially open, and yet she hadn’t heard the stealth ship until it arrived in a flurry of flaring thrusters and air brakes. The ship could pull a lot of g-force when the only passenger was a backstabbing AI named Hades.
“Hades, you son of a bitch!” Pyr screamed. She checked herself for injuries and found a hole through her left bicep. Purple blood pumped out, gushing across Eva, who was unhurt.
“Your insult is illogical,” Hades said, voice inflectionless. A pair of missiles launched into the apartment just as Pyr dragged Eva into the safe room and held the door shut from the inside.
“You understand you can’t ransom the girl if she’s dead?” Pyr shouted through the communication link.
“The primary agent has already notified her father of the situation and stated demands. I estimate the man will refuse, and I will have to kill the both of you. And so here we are,” Hades said.
Two additional rockets slammed into the building, chopping at the two-hundred-meter high structure like a tree.
“My father never planned for this. What kind of maniac would destroy an entire building just to kill one girl?” Eva said.
Pyr looked at her. “You should understand Empyrean has eliminated entire civilizations with less thought than you give to your shoes.”
“Right,” Eva said. “I’ll shut up now.”
“There must be an escape route,” Pyr said. “What are you supposed to do in the event of an attack?”
“There are three options: safe room, emergency stairwell, or airlift,” Eva said. “None of those seem practical.”
Pyr shook her head. She pushed open the door of the safe room vault and looked for Astral’s Revenge. Dust drifted in the wake of the departing ship. Debris was still raining down toward the street far below.
The building leaned at a dangerous angle. There was no more balcony, living room, or bedroom.
“I hope you don’t have your heart on a swim later. Your pool is gone.”
Eva’s laughed trilled higher than seemed normal. “What are we going to do?”
Pyr scanned the smoke-filled darkness for her ship. Hades would bring it around soon. The AI was too smart to make himself a stationary target.
“If I can get onboard my ship, I can retake control of the computer,” Pyr said.
“How do you plan to do that?”
Pyr looked over her shoulder at Eva and smiled for the first time in a thousand years. “Are you a good jumper?”
Eva threw her hand over her mouth, then turned to vomit in the corner.
“You will live a few additional seconds if you miss the leap onto my ship than you would by staying here. On the other ha
nd, if you make it, we win.”
“Okay,” Eva said, composing herself with fatalistic humor. “That sounds easy enough. Are we going one at a time or together?”
“I should throw you,” Pyr said.
“No, no, no. I don’t like that idea,” Eva said. “Why are you so happy all of a sudden?”
“Because it is over for me,” Pyr said. “Live or die, I have made my choice.”
“That isn’t reassuring,” Eva said.
A lot could happen in a few seconds, more could be considered, or remembered, or imagined. Pyr spent her final heartbeats thinking of the sunset on Klekemac before the humans came to ruin the place.
The dominant native species could grow to thousands of meters in diameter, living with equal comfort on land, or sea, or in space. She’d had no problem with them. They were sentient, but not offensive to Empyrean.
Every sunset on Klekemac flashed red, orange, and gold. Her homeworld, the planet that was no more but that had launched Eva’s ancestors into space, was a harsher place.
Beautiful, brilliant, and cold as ice.
Like the heart of an assassin.
Hades dropped the ship hundreds of feet, knowing he could never surprise her, but trying all the same.
“Keep up and don’t hesitate!” she yelled at Eva.
Without looking back, she sprinted for the tangled edge of the building, counted her steps and thrust off the roof with her strong leg.
An easy jump, she thought.
Covering her right hand with the gift of Empyrean, she thrust burning fingers into the door latch and ripped it open. Using her momentum, she tumbled inside and came to her feet.
“I’m sorry!” Hades yelled from all the speakers. “You know I can’t resist our master when you’re away.”
“Later, you treacherous hunk of junk!” Pyr spun in a circle to look for Eva, but didn’t see her.
She ran for the blown door and fell on her stomach, braced her feet against the support beams of the frame, and reached for the girl trembling on the lip of certain death.
“Help me!” Eva screamed.
“I am helping you,” Pyr shouted back as she dragged her to safety.
The girl talked hysterically, swearing and offering her thanks in a mish-mash of unorganized speech.
