The first time warranted a curse, the second time warranted an ass-kicking. Agent Wendell P. Wolston was the only person who would still be calling. He swung back the curtain and was about to grab the ringing phone sitting on the sink when he saw a shadow move under the bathroom door.
Barely a second later, the door burst open revealing a tall man in a black suit, black cap and dark sunglasses. He stood in the doorway, a silenced Beretta in his hand. When he fired, it made a soft noise that couldn’t be heard over the sound of the running water.
Chapter 2
Manhattan, New York City
As the door slammed open, Roan jumped out of the shower, dodging left in the direction of the moving door as it struck the wall. The man in black tried to track him with the gun, however the door bounced back at almost the same speed with which it had struck the wall. It banged into the man’s outstretched arm.
Two bullets missed Roan by millimeters, the third by a yard.
Roan planted his foot on the bathroom rug and drove into the door with his shoulder as if he were back in college and hitting a tackling dummy. The move was unexpected and the power shocking. The man in black was bashed against the door jam with such force that it sent his sunglasses flying.
For the briefest of moments, the man’s right arm was extended, the gun clenched in his fist. Roan grabbed his wrist with one hand and the door with the other. He used the door as a cudgel, smashing it four straight times into the man’s head. The man didn’t utter a word, he just glared, seemingly unaffected by the blows.
He threw his weight back into the door. Roan’s strength was useless as his bare, wet feet couldn’t find a grip on the tile and he slid back. The man pivoted in an attempt to point the gun at Roan’s head. He fired three times, each bullet passing within a hair of Roan’s face.
Now, both of Roan’s hands were on the man’s gun hand, leaving Roan open and unprotected. The man bashed him repeatedly on the side of the head. Luckily the attacks were made by an untrained left hand. They were weak and awkward, and Roan put up with them long enough to twist the gun from the man’s hand.
When it clattered on the tile, the two men separated for just a moment. Roan took that second to size up the situation: he was naked and wet, his footing was compromised by the slick tiles, his legs were not yet recovered from his run, and perhaps worst of all, his opponent was strangely impervious to pain.
On the plus side, Roan excelled at violence. He attacked first, lashing out with a stiff left, followed by a hard right. The punches barely caused the man to blink. He grabbed Roan, his nails gouging into his flesh to get a grip.
Back and forth they went in the narrow confines of the bathroom, each trying to gain the upper hand. Roan was easily the better fighter, however his blows, which should have left the man dazed, did nothing to slow him down. Roan knocked out his front teeth, broke his nose and blackened both of his eyes and still the man came on.
Roan was left with no option and his next punch struck the man’s throat, crushing his larynx, breaking the hyoid bone and collapsing the trachea. The man didn’t seem to notice that his airway was blocked. He kept swinging wild haymakers until his dull eyes glazed over and his legs buckled.
When he finally collapsed, Roan grabbed the gun. Stepping around the man, he moved to the bathroom door and peeked out. His small apartment looked empty, but he still went through it, finding his front door was not only unlocked, it was wide open. In the door itself was a set of keys that Roan recognized as belonging to the custodian.
Retracing his steps, he picked up his phone and called 911, requesting two ambulances though in his heart he didn’t think either would be needed. Kneeling, he checked the man in black’s pulse, or at least he tried to. There was no pulse to be found.
At first, he only shrugged, thinking: one less scumbag, but then he saw something under the man’s cap. “Oh no,” he whispered, pulling the cap further back, revealing a neuro coupler. This wasn’t some scumbag, it was just a guy who liked to play online games.
“Arching did this. Son of a bitch! He had better…” Roan suddenly connected two very glaring dots: Caron had been killed and he had barely escaped with his life. His thoughts went right to Amanda. He hit speed dial and hers was the first number; her phone rang and rang. When it went to voice mail, he practically shouted: “Caron’s dead and I was attacked by someone wearing a coupler. Drop your phone right now and get somewhere safe!”
He texted her the same message and only then did he check his own message. As expected, it was Wendell freaking out, justifiably so, it seemed. “Roan, pick up! It’s not just Caron. D.A Isabella Thomas was murdered this morning and Judge Gibson is in the hospital.”
“Damn it!” Roan cried, slamming a fist into the wall.
“Drop the gun.” A police officer was in his doorway, a gun pointed at him. “Nice and easy, drop the gun.” Roan tossed it on his couch. “Now, the phone.”
This earned the cop a glare. “This is my house, moron. I was just attacked. The guy’s in the bathroom, but don’t touch anything. Consider this an FBI investigation.”
“Sure. They’ll be right on it, but first put down the phone and get your hands up where I can see them.”
“Hands up?” Roan glanced down at his very wet and very naked body. “Are you worried that I might have another weapon stashed somewhere?” He turned to show he was just as naked backwards as he was frontwards. “My wallet and ID are right on the counter.”
When the police officer realized Roan was telling the truth, he put away his gun. Roan ordered him to check on the custodian who lived in a garden level apartment. Roan had thrown on a pair of pants and was just buttoning up his shirt when the officer came back.
“Shot between the eyes.”
“That’s what I thought,” Roan said. “Keep people out of that apartment and put someone on the front door. I don’t want anyone wearing a coupler getting in this building, got it?” It was somewhat of a fad, especially among young men, to wear neuro couplers out in public.
After the officer left, Roan got the investigation going with a few phone calls. Soon his apartment was swarmed by detectives, agents and forensic specialists, none of whom were going to be able to tell him thing one about the real killer who had attacked him. The real killer was likely miles away, lying in a bed. But if they could discover who the dead man was, they might be able to find the connection between him and whoever had been controlling him.
He was searched, but didn’t have a wallet. His fingerprints were taken, but he wasn’t in any database. The same was true of his DNA. They tried facial recognition software. They struck out there, however it might have been because his features had been so demolished by Roan’s fists.
After hours of work, it was discovered the man was a dead end, at least for the moment. They could only hope that someone would file a missing person’s report.
During those long hours, he finally got a hold of Amanda. “It’s starting again, isn’t it?” she whispered, as if someone was right behind her.
“Are you in a safe place?”
“Yes, I’m in a cab. When we hang up I’ll take the batteries out of the phone. But what about you? I got a frantic call from someone in the New York office. They said you had been attacked.”
Roan glanced at his knuckles; they had been ripped up by the man’s teeth. Other than that, he sported only a few scratches and bruises. “I’m fine. We’ll talk tonight, right? Nothing’s changed with the time and place. Until then, keep your eyes open.”
Roan sat back on his couch, staring at his phone. In spite of all the people in his tiny apartment, he felt very much alone. He had never had many friends and those that he did have had a bad tendency of ending up dead.
Standing, he told the agent in charge, “Forward a copy of everything to Wendell, especially anything you get on the coupler. Lock up when you’re done.”
Before stepping outside, he slipped the battery from his phone, grabbed his laptop and backpack, a
nd checked the load on his Glock 22. It was starting again. There was no question about that. Somehow, Arching had nearly taken out everyone associated with his conviction. And he had done it from jail. It was tempting to head straight to Rikers Island and haul Arching’s ass down to an interrogation room and beat a confession out of him.
Tempting, but expected. Roan had to be very careful. He was a target, or very likely had been a target for a long time. It was likely that he was only still alive because Arching had wanted to make a production of the killings. Four murders in one day—that was a message.
Roan put out a hand to a hail a taxi. One showed up almost on cue. He took a step towards it only to feel that queer sensation of fear creep down his back. “I changed my mind,” he told the cabbie, waving him on with his left hand; his right hand had stolen up under his suit coat where his Glock sat.
He went up the block, hung a left and jogged up 9th Avenue, crossing mid-block. A bar was on his right, he ducked in, flashing his badge at the lonely bartender. “Where’s the back door?”
“You’re not allowed to…”
He didn’t slow down and as he stepped into the kitchen, he said over his shoulder, “Call the cops, if you wish.” Following the exit signs led him to an alley. From there he doubled back, heading south, parallel to 9th. More confusing turns followed this before he chanced a cab. He had it stop down the block from the FBI field office.
When he got out, he walked slowly to the entrance, the skin across his back twitching and tingling, expecting a bullet that never came. His smile was tight when he went through security. He gave the rent-a-cops the same order against wearing couplers. “Check hats, scarves, headdresses, turbans, bonnets, everything. Even yarmulkes just in case they have a mini version.”
After that, his first stop in the building was Caron’s office. Wendell was already there, sitting behind the desk and looking lost. His lips were tight, his pale grey eyes reddened around the rims. For an agent he was a little too thin, a little too small, a little too lost in his own suit. He worried far too much, but he did have a keen mind, a sharp eye and his memory for detail was excellent.
“Give me the particulars,” Roan ordered.
This broke him out of his trance. “Caron was killed by a high-powered rifle from a building two blocks away. It was a head shot from about two-hundred yards, which isn’t easy. Witnesses claim that a big man in a dark suit and sunglasses was seen hurrying from the building, heading west.”
He paused, taking a deep breath before going on, “Assistant District Attorney, Isabella Thomas’s cause of death was cyanide poisoning. It was found both in her coffee and a bottle of aspirin. She was dead in under three minutes. Security footage shows a man, again in dark clothing and sunglasses, heading onto the floor the night before.”
“Probably the same guy,” Roan said. “What about Judge Gibson? Have we found any connection there?”
“So far, no. He was stuck with needles sown into his jacket. The needles contained the venom of the hooked-nose sea snake. It’s one of the most venomous snakes in the world. The LD-50 rating of its venom is less than two milligrams, about the weight of four dandelion seeds.”
LD-50 referred to the minimum dose of a particular venom that would kill fifty percent of the population.
“And then there’s the attack on you,” Wendell said. “Probably the very same guy. Who uses a silencer in New York City? A gun for hire?”
The answer was obvious: “A long distance rifle shot, cyanide, poison needled and a silenced hand all add up to an assassin. Maybe an unstoppable one.”
2—
While a dozen agents continued to delve into the recent assassinations, Roan had all the evidence and files from the Arching case brought to his office. For such a high profile case, hard physical evidence was scant.
The case had been won on Roan’s testimony, which had included Arching’s confession concerning holding Amanda in a state which could only be described as permanent suspended animation. Kidnapping was the only charge that had any chance of sticking. All the murder charges were tossed, as were the conspiracy charges, since Tim Cole had died.
The only person they could find connected to Arching was Paul Clay, the front desk man at the Ritz, however he had clammed up, except to say he had only fired his gun because he thought Roan had been a terrorist with a fake ID. No one in the Bureau had believed him, still, because of the lack of strong evidence, he had been able to plea bargain down to a weapons charge. He’d be out in three years.
Which left Roan without a trail to follow.
He picked over the files, almost all of which were witness interviews from people who had been at the Ritz. The few that weren’t were computer experts who had been brought on board to simplify the science around the concept of virtual reality. Unfortunately, even they didn’t know how Arching had been able to control the bodies of Joanna Niederer, Leo Magnuson, and Greg Nelson.
Even with rigged couplers, no one had been able to replicate the mind/body control.
Such a demonstration would have been little or no help since the victim’s couplers had all been examined and no tampering had been discovered. Roan had been in the hospital recovering from multiple surgeries during this time and had never seen the raw data.
For the most part, it was computer speak and might as well have been Greek for all he understood. Strangely, what he could understand, he didn’t understand. “No prints? Not even partials? Who took these? And where are the trace reports?” He looked through the boxes until he found the evidence log and saw that trace swabs had been collected, but a report of the results had never been filed.
Roan was up in a flash and heading for the forensics department, ready to rip into someone. His head was beginning to thump from one of the blows he had taken, but there was no way he was going to touch the bottle of Motrin in his desk. Not just yet, perhaps not ever.
He went right to the head of the lab, Supervisor Bob Cranz. “Can you help me with something, Bob? These results don’t make any sense to me.” He handed over the files on the collected evidence. As Bob typed in the case file, Roan went on, “It seems very unlikely that both the Niederer and Cole couplers were without prints. I’ve worn one of those things for a couple of weeks. You put them on, you take them off. You leave prints.”
“Hmmm, not from what I’m seeing. You have the full report. No prints were found, not even partials. Maybe they were wiped clean. It happens, right?”
“And this?” He handed over the notes on the collection of trace swabs. Bob’s bland look took on a touch of plastic as he saw the implication in the single piece of paper. He scrolled down the lab’s case notes until he found the trace information; a second later, his face brightened.
“There was no trace on the couplers. Whoever wiped them, wiped them very well indeed. Sorry, Roan. After everything’s that happened, I wish I could say we screwed the pooch on this, but it wasn’t us. Sometimes the bad guys know what they’re doing, right?”
Now, it was Roan’s turn to fake a smile. “Yes, sometimes.” This was definitely one of those times. In this case, the bad guys knew what they were doing because they were also the good guys. Joanna’s coupler had been pulled from her bloody head by an FBI agent. It had been bagged, logged into evidence, and brought to the lab. In all it hadn’t travelled more than fifty yards and hadn’t left this one building and Bob wanted to tell him that it had been wiped clean by a “bad guy?”
He thanked Bob and walked back to his office, once more, his skin twitching and crawling, knowing what he would find when he got back. Tim Cole had been playing Infinite Reality for years. There should have been prints and trace all over his coupler. The paperwork said there was none. When he got back, he opened the evidence bag and saw the reason: it wasn’t Cole’s coupler.
The one in the bag, even though it had been taken apart by the analysts a year before, was basically brand new. It still had that right out of the package smell.
“Arching has a m
ole in the Bureau,” Roan whispered, a hand over his mouth. The realization sent a cold shiver through him. First a remote controlled assassin and now a spy in their midst.
Roan was still there, sweating out the realization when the phone rang at his elbow. His gun was out and pointed at it before the first ring ended. “Oh, jeeze,” he said, passing a hand over his face. “Yeah, it’s Roan.”
“Yes, Agent Roan, this is A.D. Hernandez. We need to talk.”
“I’ll be up in a few minutes.” Roan hung up the phone, not knowing what to do. Arching didn’t necessarily have only one spy in the Bureau. Was Assistant Director Hernandez involved? “I’m being stupid and paranoid.”
Despite this claim, he stuffed the evidence bags under his coat and locked his office behind him, before going to see the highest ranking FBI agent in the state. Hernandez normally didn’t stand when his inferiors came in, but having survived a recent assassination attempt must have warmed his normally cold heart.
Hernandez even shook his hand. He then gestured to a woman of about forty. She was slim, had hazel eyes, and there were just a few grey hairs standing out in her brunette bun. She wore a cream-colored pantsuit. The outfit was smart and stylish and yet the gun at her belt made it look odd. “Do you know Special Agent in Charge Lorrie Covington?”
Although the FBI wasn’t the largest community, Roan hadn’t met her before. He shook her hand. “Hi, nice to meet you. Do you mind waiting outside? I need to talk…”
The Assistant Director in Charge cut him off. “She’s been the S.A.C. in White Plains. I’ve asked her to take over Caron’s position on a temporary basis.” Roan looked at her sharply, something Hernandez misconstrued. “You’ll have to get used to Roan. He’s got an issue with authority, isn’t that right, Roan? He and Caron used to fight like an old married couple. That’s not going to happen this time, I hope.”
There had been a warning note in his voice, but Roan missed it. “No, she’s perfect.”
Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2 A LITRPG Adventure Page 2
