by P. R. Adams
Chan squeezed against me and whimpered. “They’re killing them.”
“Not yet.” I pulled the display sliver off and taped it on Chan’s forearm—so soft and flimsy. If caught in melee… “Watch the muzzle flashes. You see them? Bright white? Watch for an opening, then run for the generator. And I mean run!”
Chan teared up. “I can’t.”
“Treat it like a video game. Hide behind things if someone shoots. But remember, you only get one life.”
I didn’t wait for the fear to slip from Chan’s face after that but burst through the door. The gunmen on the loading dock had cover from Huiyin. Not from me.
There was no time for subtle. I shot one in the hip, the other in the shoulder.
They fell.
I holstered my pistol and tossed the other one, then leaped over the railing. The sunken loading area was about five feet lower, meaning the roof was maybe fifty feet up. It was an insane distance. I sprinted toward the closest overhang, and jumped, testing my legs and my body.
It felt like someone tore the flesh from the small of my back when I went airborne, and fire shot up my spine. My arms flailed with no hint of grace as the wall grew closer.
I saw the overhang. My left hand grasped, missed, but my right caught it.
And then I smacked into the wall. My face scraped against concrete. Implanted teeth dug into fragile, human lips, drawing blood. My nose cracked. More blood.
Broken. Again.
The cybernetic arms still worked. I hauled myself up and threw my legs over the top, then triggered the drone video to feed to my eyes. It was a strange sensation, seeing myself, seeing the gunmen, seeing Ichi.
And flashing lights on the horizon, coming up from the suburbs. Police!
I reset to night vision.
The two security people were flanking Ichi, moving in to pin her down. Probably to kill her.
I ran for the closest, translating the overhead imagery into meaningful location as I dashed between mechanical obstructions. When I spotted a place I was confident of, I jumped, watching for the security guard as I passed over. He looked up, and I swore there was a look of disbelief on his face. A middle-aged guy, bodybuilder, pale hair.
I put a round through his disbelieving face.
The second guard was coming at me as I rolled to a graceless, desperate stop. Bullets slammed into the roof around me, then into my thigh, then one caught me in the chest.
I groaned, tasted more blood.
But the shooting stopped.
Ichi ran toward me, knife dripping dark fluid. “You are bleeding.”
“Bullets…do that.” I holstered my pistol and held a hand up.
She anchored her feet and pulled me up.
My chest burned, but it was going numb. I didn’t have long. Shock didn’t give a shit if I was half cybernetic, and the wound seemed like the sort that would bring on shock.
Ichi got me to the edge of the roof. “Take the rungs.”
Sure. Just take the rungs. With arms that seemed to be made of lead now. She guided my legs into position, then slid over me, anchoring my body against the cold metal. It felt awkward, having her pressed so tight against me. Awkward but nice. There was a strength to her, and a youthful vitality I wished I hadn’t let the world steal from me.
Ichi hissed into my ear, “You must stay alert, Stefan-san.”
“I am. The gunfire’s not like it was.” And it wasn’t. It sounded more distant, but more importantly, it was nowhere near as constant.
“Huiyin sees us. She has Chan. They are waiting.”
I should have been able to tell them we were almost there, but just holding onto the rungs was taking a lot out of me. It sounded like Ichi was talking to them, or maybe she was talking to me. I helped as much as I could going down, but halfway to the ground, I began wheezing and my arms just stopped working.
“Stefan-san, we are going to have to jump,” Ichi said. “Can you catch yourself?”
“Yeah,” I lied. My legs weren’t doing much better than my arms.
“I will guide you.”
One of her arms wrapped around my ribs, which was fine. Actually, I really enjoyed it. Until she pushed off and twisted. My arms flopped toward the ground, which came up at me so fast, so terribly fast. And then my hands cracked against the concrete with enough force to shatter bone, and my arms couldn’t do a damned thing to keep my head from smacking into the unforgiving surface with enough force to crack my skull open—
But Ichi’s sneakers slapped to the ground, and her arm held my head up. Barely.
She staggered, then went to her knees, then fell on me. Breathing, groaning, gasping. Had I broken her?
“Ichi?” I wanted to stand, to carry her, to get her to safety. I’d sworn to my best friend that I would protect her.
She got up slowly and pulled me to her. “I am…fine.”
There had been a time once, when Norimitsu and I had been in Japan, in between missions. He had taken me to watch her train. The facility—built by the money he’d earned risking his life—was beautiful: dark wood frame, polished teakwood floor covered with high-end, professional gymnastics gear. It was all surrounded by stone gardens. Serene, graceful, beautiful.
Tae-hee glared at us from beside a balance beam, barking orders to Ichi. I was an invader. Ichi performed a routine that was too dangerous for a child her age. But she seemed to puff up with pride at showing her father what she could do.
A handstand. A somersault. And then a backflip.
But her foot slid off, and she took a terrible fall. The sort of fall that could have broken her back. I ran to her, held back at the last second by Norimitsu.
Tae-hee’s face twisted with emotions—fear, shame, anger. She shouted at Ichi. Shouted! And the little girl who had the most innocent, angelic face I had ever seen, sat up. She wiped tears from eyes that had been meant to melt hearts, then got to her feet and bowed.
“I am sorry,” she said.
And fury burned in my heart. Fury at my best friend and at the woman I had loved but could never have. Fury for the way they could risk their only child’s life over something as foolish as gymnastics.
And then Norimitsu trained her in his own special skills.
“Stefan-san, are you all right?” Ichi sounded winded.
We were almost to the generator building. People were still firing at us. “I’m okay, Ichi.”
I flicked the drone view back on. The guards were moving closer.
And something else was closing.
A helicopter. A military helicopter. Flying in at an attack angle.
Getting ready to fire missiles.
I flicked back to my night vision. “Ichi, we have to get into the pipe.”
“We are almost there.”
I got my feet under me. Weak. Flimsy. My arms were worse, but I wrapped them around her. I lifted her up and ran. “Into the pipe!”
Huiyin seemed to catch where I was looking. A rocket trail lit the sky over the water. She dragged Chan into the building. I followed, feeling far too slow, hugging Ichi tight. Would my frail human body be enough to protect her?
She looked up at me as I bounced off the doorframe, and the tears from the little child’s eyes hit me again, but those eyes were different now. Grown up.
No one was going to hurt her. I had sworn.
I staggered into the sub-room and dropped her through the opening, then I stuck a foot into the top rung. Almost. I flailed at the hatch, dragged clumsy fingers across it, caught, and fell.
Just as fire curled past the generator and into the sub room.
Chapter 21
My mother had believed in God and Satan and hell and this big, eternal fire that burned and burned but never destroyed what it was burning. Whatever the helicopter had launched into the compound, it must have been full of that fire. We were curled on the floor of the pipe, pressed up tight against each other, and the heat just kept coming at us. Driving out the saltwater smell and the cool dampness tha
t had been all around us.
Glowing. The air was somehow glowing. There was a light so faint that a human eye might not perceive it. But my cybernetic ones could. The air that had gotten through before the hatch closed carried ash with it, ash that clung to skin and tongue, left a bitter, chemical taste behind. It clogged the sinuses with destruction.
Breathing. And crying. They finally replaced the roar of flame we couldn’t possibly have heard.
And then the pressure, the sense of the fire sucking everything into it, was gone.
I was vaguely aware of hands running over me. Huiyin. Ichi. Chan. My jacket was opened, my shirt lifted up. Someone pressed against the crook where my neck sloped out to my shoulder. Someone else pressed against my chest.
Lots of sobbing and shouting went back and forth.
I tried for a smile, but I’m not sure what I managed after smacking into the wall like I had. “Hey, no need to fight over me. There’s still plenty to go around.”
Someone slapped me. I think it was Ichi. I guess I was being insensitive.
Huiyin leaned in close. “You’ve lost too much blood.”
“Yeah. Feels like it.”
“We can’t get you to a hospital fast enough.”
“There were lights—”
She shook me. “You have to fight this!”
“No, no. First responders. Police. Maybe an ambulance. Coming toward the facility before the missile.”
Huiyin’s head snapped up. She held a hand out to Ichi. “Your gloves. Thermal shielded?”
Ichi seemed taken aback, then she nodded and pulled her gloves off.
Gloves. She had gloves on. Chan had slapped me?
Huiyin let go of me, and a second later, her shoes clanged on the rungs. Grunting followed, then the groan of warped metal on concrete. The texture of the air changed: smokier, more caustic, hotter. Then it was cooler. I could make out the salty scent again.
The generator building, the air outside, it was sucking the pipe clean, creating an equilibrium.
Something thudded to the pipe floor, then there were hands on me. Rough. Pulling.
I must have blacked out. We were moving over cracked and blackened concrete. A wall to my left. Charred and cracked like the parking lot. Ichi had me by my thighs, Huiyin by my shoulders. Tears flowed from magenta eyes to my left. Black-metallic-polished fingernails held bloody cloth to my side and touched my cheek.
“Still breathing,” I managed.
That just made Chan’s tears worse.
Guilt. Chan must have thought what had happened to me wouldn’t have without me having to focus on protecting everyone.
“It was a good trap.” My voice sounded like shit. I was choking on blood. “I should’ve been ready for it.”
Chan’s magenta waves shook. “Shut up.” Barely more than a whisper.
“What about the data? We get anything?”
Chan’s head bowed. “Later.”
“We need to know. Was it worth it?”
Lights. Flashing lights. Radio squelch. Shouting. The jingle of chain, the swish of material on material, the squeak of leather—someone running in gear.
First responders. I closed my eyes. Maybe we’d make it after all.
“We got survivors!” A man’s voice, raspy and strained. “Get those paramedics over here!”
More radio chatter. Wheels banging and clattering, boots stomping.
“Any others with you?” Raspy Voice.
“No.” Huiyin. “We were working in the generator building. He caught the worst of it. Lots of fragments.”
Raspy Voice snorted. Not a challenge. More of a “go figure” sort of sound.
Then the clatter of wheels stopped. More hands. Lifting. I think someone cursed, and it wasn’t me.
Ichi made a sound deep in her throat. “Cybernetics. You need to inject here.”
“Here” was my gut, my armpit, my neck. The human parts.
They were searching for a place to stick me. Near my collarbone. What had Dr. Jernigan called it? Subclavian. The pinch of the needle near the collarbone.
I forced my eyes open. Uniformed EMTs. A chunky gal, peroxide blond, way past her prime, scared shitless. A bodybuilder guy in his late twenties or mid-thirties, thinning dark hair, eyes and skin that could have been Asian or Hispanic. He’d seen some shit before. You could see it in his calm demeanor. Probably military.
He saw my eyes open. “Hey. Hey! You know your blood type?”
“AB.” I chuckled, and blood bubbled out of my mouth. “Luckiest guy in the world.” They’d said that the first time I’d taken a round in the field. Universal recipient.
The world moved beneath me, squeaking and clattering. The chunky gal didn’t seem at all convinced I was worth the effort. She kept looking at her partner with that sort of confused, pinched-faced scowl that said, really? I’d survived worse, but that was when there had been more of me. Like, a couple extra legs and arms more.
“Tough sonofabitch,” I muttered.
And then I passed out again.
When I woke, I was curtained in, surrounded by machines that made reassuring pinging noises and had displays that were easy on the eyes. I thought about turning them off, then realized my arms were strapped down. Had I hurt someone? My clothes were gone, replaced by a gown that didn’t really cover much. That was fine. There wasn’t much of me left to cover, and my modesty had sort of slipped away with my limbs.
The curtains parted, and a young woman stepped in, data device in hand. She looked like a Pacific Islander—curvaceous, cute, dark hair and burnt cork skin, with big brown eyes. A big guy in cop uniform watched her through the curtain. He had slicked-back black hair and a hooked nose that gave the impression he’d seen action. Solid protection. Comforting.
“Mr. Mendoza?” The nurse smiled, big and pleasant. Not someone who’d been at it for too long. “How are you feeling?”
“Did you get the number off the plate of the truck that hit me?” I almost sounded glib. More pathetic, really.
“You should feel better soon. They’ve got you on a really good cocktail.” She leaned over me, checking lines running from the machines to the parts of me that were organic. The way she moved, the way she filled out her uniform—she brought back memories of an Army buddy who obsessed over nurses. He’d died surrounded by them in triage, not a one of them like in his fantasies. That had been fine. There hadn’t been enough of him left to do anything more than scream for a while.
Someone coughed.
The nurse straightened and twisted around, giving me a good look at two women in dark coats and pants, one black and in her thirties or forties, one pale and middle-aged.
Special Agent Lyndsey Hines of the FBI and Agent Merkel.
The Agency. The one who’d run the action team that killed Nitin.
The nurse took a step toward them. “Excuse me, but this is the ICU. You—”
Lyndsey must have flashed ID or something. “We’d like to talk to Mr. Mendoza. Alone.”
“I—” The nurse stiffened.
Hook Nose was waving for her to follow him. She gave me a worried look, then trailed him out of the room.
Lyndsey closed the curtain behind Merkel. They huddled up close to my head.
I asked, “Is this where you read me my rights, or where machines get shut off and a pillow gets placed over my face?”
Up closer, Merkel looked like she’d taken the express lane from her fifties to sixties. Her skin was powdery pale and like parchment. The sick look seemed to have reached her blue eyes, blanching them almost colorless. She pulled the blanket up a bit more, covering me. It was casual, matter-of-fact. No need to say thank you. “No pillow. You’ve managed to survive so much already. I think I’d rather have you out there to lure Agent Stovall in.”
“Still can’t find him?” I glanced at the water pitcher resting nearby. “Any chance I could—?”
Lyndsey took a slow walk around the end of the bed and poured some water into a cup. She smirk
ed, but it wasn’t all that humorous of a look. “Were you a messy child, Agent Mendoza? Because you sure leave a trail behind you.”
“I thought we were on a first-name basis?” I sipped through the straw sticking out of the cup, grunting at how tender my lips were. “That mess is not by choice, by the way. This is Stovall’s doing.”
Merkel glanced over her shoulder, as if she thought the nurse might be hiding behind the curtain with a parabolic mic. Merkel moved closer and said in a soft voice, “You’ve pushed Agent Stovall and his allies into a desperate situation.”
“I think I might be a little more desperate.” I tugged at the straps on my arms.
Lyndsey offered me another sip, then set the cup down. “We’ve got nearly forty corpses on their way to the morgue. You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out myself. I know it has something to do with the Metacorporate Initiative, and that’s about it.”
They exchanged a look: Not exactly what they were expecting.
I cleared my throat, wished for some of Wendy’s earthy tea. What had she explained? “Trillions of dollars are in play. Lots of people could be exposed if some sensitive data is released. Careers could be ruined, jail time—”
Lyndsey’s lips twisted—bearer of bad news. “Unless you’ve got that data now, it’s no good. The SEC would probably like a crack at any criminals.”
“SEC?”
“Securities and Exchange Commission.”
“Another commission? Where did all these come from?”
She snorted. “You did work for the government, right?”
“Agency, not some bureaucratic desk jockey.” I looked to Merkel for support; she frowned. Desk jockeys apparently stuck up for one another.
Lyndsey patted my arm, finally sympathetic. “They’re the watchdog organization—stock market, securities. You don’t have them, you get the Wild West. Economic chaos.”
“This commission have bad people in it? If not, they weren’t my concern.”
“It’s supposed to be apolitical, but they’ve had some bad apples. Not criminal. They’re good folks from what I know. What’s left of them, at least. They’ve been getting squeezed for a while—budget cuts, changes to regulations. And now that initiative’s being fast-tracked. Both houses of Congress. And when it’s signed into law in the next few weeks, the SEC’s going to be toothless. Everyone knows it.”
