by M. Lorrox
Qilin raises an eyebrow as she turns to Mustang. He’s turning red with the laughs he’s trying to hold in. Qilin sighs. “I think he was just fucking with you. The bad news is that this might be just an overnight trip.”
Madeline scrunches her face as she looks at Mustang, and he bursts out laughing. Then, she smiles and tosses the hair dye kit on the bed. “That bad news might be the best news I’ve had all day.”
Qilin sits. “I dunno... Steve’s inside Lorenzo’s compound, only a couple miles from here. He said they’re not going to do any deals or trades until the morning, which gives us plenty of time to get the job done tonight.”
Jambavan walks over to the window, draws back the curtain, and looks out into the city night. “Have you scoped it out yet? What kind of resistance will we be facing?”
“Steve’s really been kicking ass, he’s been sending all sorts of good intel. I’ve already identified our attack angle, but other details will depend on the guard rotations when we’re on the ground. We’ll scope it out when we go in.”
Jambavan drops the curtain and turns around to face the older knight. “When will that be?”
Qilin glances at Mustang, then Madeline, then back to Jambavan. “As soon as we get our shit together and acquire some equipment.”
Mustang winks and motions over his shoulder toward the window. “Saddle up.” He smiles with confidence.
Qilin raises a single eyebrow and tilts her head. “Umm, we can’t leave yet, we—”
He waves both his hands in front of him. “No, no no... Uh... Ah!” He nods with a grin and repeats his motion toward the window. “Lock, stock, and barrels.”
Qilin purses her lips. “Avete le armi nel camion?”
He pretends to spit and winks.
Qilin smiles. “Well then.”
Madeline rolls her eyes and makes her frustration known with a loud sigh.
Qilin glances at her with a grin, then she looks to Jambavan. “Mustang apparently has gear in his truck, help him bring it all up?”
“Okay.”
Madeline sits on the bed and shakes her head. As Mustang passes, he draws his thumb and pointer finger across the brim of his hat with a slight tip. She throws herself back on the bed, then groans; the hair dye kit’s box jams into her kidney.
Qilin starts to follow the others out the door, but she pauses and turns back to Madeline. “You’re going to have to loosen up.” She walks into the hall and closes the door behind her.
Madeline stares at the ceiling. Y’all are the biggest bunch of crazies I think I’ve ever met.
In a hotel hallway halfway around the world, Sadie jogs toward her room. Gerard made arrangements for Minnie to have a playdate with his grandson, and he texted Sadie a minute ago asking if she prepared a bag. Sadie was in the middle of a meeting with the High Council, Schermer, and the other vampires that were called to the mole-trap. Collectively, they’ve been discussing the best ways to respond to any attacks from Væir, should any occur.
Now, Sadie is rushing to her room to pack a bag for Minnie, and to bring it to Gerard in the lobby.
She takes a corner—glancing momentarily at the wall she smashed with a glass—then she picks up speed down the empty hall. I can’t believe I forgot the bag... Can’t believe this is happening, everything’s turning into a disaster. Goddamned Væir assholes starting a war between vampires and humans, the operation to stop them sabotaged before it started, Eddy lost his fucking hands, and if I know Carles, he’ll fight with every ounce of life in him...maybe without thinking things through. She swallows as she slows down and steps up to her door.
She slips her card into the door’s lock, and the light turns green. She shoves the door open and is alarmed to hear a -thud- against the wall behind the door.
She closes the door and bends down. “Rusty? What are you doing there?” She reaches out to the furry beast, but he doesn’t move. What? She picks him up. “Stop fooling around, you survived being cooked in an incinerator, being hit with a door didn’t hurt you.” She sets him on the bed.
He’s breathing, but not moving.
She shakes him. “Rusty? Come on boy, wake up.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Rusty?”
His ribs lift with another breath, then fall.
Sadie starts to shake her head, slow at first, and then faster. What the fuck next?
Charlie blinks, then he squints and furrows his brow. He points at Mary. “Your arm... It was eaten, and you replaced it with a metal snake?”
“Not quite.” She smiles as the shiny metal that was concealed by the blanket unravels from a loop. She lifts what used to be her right arm up and reveals something crossed between a prehensile tail and a creepy anime robot’s tentacle—the whip prototype Dr. Kazumi Oshiro invented. Mary extends the long device in front of her and then curls it into a spiral.
“You’re controlling it?”
She twirls it in the other direction, then she lifts her arm up and allows the whip to spin around her body. At first, she twists it around her in an almost seductive motion, caressing the space around her, but she starts to move it faster and faster. “What are our bodies but electrochemical machines? And what is vampirism’s greatest benefit? Accelerated healing and regrowth.” The whip slices through the air around her. “Nerve cells coupled to electrical sensors, connected to microprocessors and batteries, driving artificial muscles... Do you understand now—what we can become? We can finally free ourselves of physical limitations. We can interface directly with computers, and we can experience a modular corporeal life.”
Keep talking crazy while I figure this out... Charlie studies where the tentacle-like device attaches to her upper arm. The thin whip’s metal ends at a semicircle, which is clamped to a four-inch wide ring, which is in turn clamped to another ring that is somehow attached to her arm. He motions at her with the blanket still hanging from his hand. “You’re telling me you’re controlling that thing with your brain?”
She extends and snaps the end of the whip across her front, and it tears through the air above July’s unconscious body. “That’s right, although I’ve only been able to program large movements so far. My humanoid hand attachment responds just like normal.
What! Eddy could have hands again...
She nods and smiles. “Yes, I can tell you appreciate what this can do for our kind—for your son.” She allows her eight-foot-long tentacle-arm to settle onto the ground. “We were even able to give Peter’s son another chance at life, but you saw fit to extinguish that.”
“Peter’s son? In the robot suit?”
She nods.
He sighs. “It doesn’t matter…” His lip curls. “Where is that son of a bitch?”
“He took off yesterday. MY POINT, Carles, is that your insistence on vengeance and sentimental emotions—” She points at July with her normal arm. “—blind you to the realities of the world. All progress requires sacrifice.”
Charlie follows where she points with his eyes, then he frowns and covers July up with the blanket. “How fucking dare you?”
She scoffs.
“I’m serious Mary, I thought you were a friend. Sure you pissed me off, but most people do. How dare you...” He glances at July. Then, he imagines Eddy without his hands, then the blown apart limbs of his still living team members, then the corpses he helped move to their final resting places. He swallows and flips his sword around in his hands so the blade faces out—toward his enemy. The cold darkness the blade pushed into his mind now is redirected. He adds to it his own fury, and one more thing: his honor. Goddamn I want to kill you, but I should wait for Ghost... Where the hell is she?
Mary sends a wave through the tentacle, and it moves along the ground like a sleeping dragon repositioning its tail. “I want to show you something.”
FUCK YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU WANT! “Okay.”<
br />
She doesn’t move, but suddenly, Charlie hears the flat screen television on the wall behind him click on. He turns and watches as it flashes through video feeds. How the... He glances at Mary, who is perfectly still.
She smirks while looking directly at him. “Here we are.”
Charlie looks back at the screen and sees a colored-thermal image of Ghost approaching the same corner where earlier he tossed a faceless guard to catch bullets—she’ll be at the room soon.
Mary clears her throat. “From a resting position, each of our fingers is capable of being contracted or extended, using multiple knuckles per finger. They can also be splayed apart, pressed together, used in unison or individually.”
On the screen, Ghost checks around the corner, then rounds it. The input switches, and now she’s shown from a camera just outside the room.
Throughout the facility, a voice spills over the speakers. “You in the hall with the katars, STOP immediately.” It also comes from Mary’s mouth, and Charlie hears the words from both sources.
He jerks his head to look at Mary. “That’s your voice, but—”
She speaks again, but her voice isn’t sent over the speakers. “What’s the problem Carles, still stuck inside your limited body?” She blinks and turns the microphone implanted in her neck back on. “I said don’t move!”
In the hall, Ghost pulls her hand from one of her katars and temporarily holds it with her other hand’s fingers. With her now free and empty hand, she rockets a middle finger up to the distant camera on the ceiling. She grabs the katar’s handle again and keeps jog-limping toward the door.
Mary sighs.
In the hall, a pair of turrets swivel and aim at Ghost.
She stops.
Mary clears her throat and speaks only to Charlie. “Where were we... It doesn’t matter, the takeaway is that without using degrees of motion, we—” She motions to herself, July, and Charlie. “—anyone born with a hand, can send 8,000 different combinations of finger positions instantly... A computer keyboard has how many buttons? Fifty?” She smiles. “I’ve practiced for years to master the different commands, and I’ve used only about a thousand.” She motions to the screen with her chin. “I only need five to kill her, and that’s because I need three to select a gun’s targeting video feed and patch it into my retinal implant.” She feigns annoyed disgust. “I’ll have to train another one of my 8,000 commands to autocycle feeds... Such a pain.”
Charlie grips his sword. “Hurt anyone else, and I’ll cut your damned head off. Unless it’ll then sprout little metal legs and crawl around like a spider, in which case I’ll just rip your fucking brain from your skull.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’ve always been so charming, Arashi-Ōdachi.”
He thinks quick, but all his ideas suck. “So, you want to become a race of cyborgs? Is that it? That’s the grand plan then? Kill the humans, takeover the earth, and then stick computers up your ass to be a sci-fi abomination?”
She nods. “Except not in our asses, and abomination is the wrong idea. I’ll create a new way of life: an immortal species, freed of genetic weakness, and cybernetically enhanced to interact with the world and communicate instantly with technology.”
He nods. “Yeah, like I said, a fucking abomination.”
“God, Carles, the trajectory this planet is on ends in absolute destruction. It’s been on that path’s fast-track for over a hundred years, and I know you understand this more than most.”
He shakes his head. “You can’t just kill everyone.”
“Death is the largest motivating inevitability of the human condition, and it makes them selfish. We are the solution. Evolution through random mutation brought the world this far, but now that mechanism is broken. It brought us all into being though, and through us, we brought computers, and now I, through Væir, will bring the world to its ultimate path.”
Charlie laughs. “Listen, whatever crazy you want to believe…fine, believe it. But I have one question before I kill you and leave.”
She raises the whip device and points its sharp titanium tip straight toward his eye. “Shoot.”
He lowers his sword and motions to July. “What did you do to make her attack me?”
“There’s so much you don’t understand. Try this on for size.” She closes her eyes and sets her “arms” to her side.
Charlie licks his lips and raises his sword up behind him, silently, to throw it and embed its bloodthirsty length through her heart.
“I can still see you, you big dumb idiot.” She points to a camera in the corner of the room. With her eyes still closed, she grins. “I sort of hypnotized her, but it wasn’t easy—she was surprisingly resilient. Here you go.” She starts to make a low humming sound, and she quivers.
Charlie feels a pulse of heat course through his body. Then, on its heels is that odd scent again, but now it’s exponentially stronger. It makes his eyes burn and his mouth go dry. He coughs. “What the fuck?”
She opens her eyes. “Being the oldest vampire in the world has some unspoken advantages.” She snickers. “People didn’t come up with that ‘Glamour’ idea from nowhere. Science calls it pheromones, control over autonomic functions, electromagnetic pulses, and infrasonic influence. I’m aware that Hamid has some additional sensory ability, and Sadie might be old enough to start having some also, but she can certainly influence her pheromones. I don’t believe she’s quite figured out how to control it yet, though.”
She tilts her head. “I can tell that you have remarkable control over your own blood-chemistry—you’ve withstood my attempts to influence you—and I bet you can trigger glandular responses. I doubt you’re old enough to have developed any more-interesting abilities, but if you are, they’re probably too new and subtle for you to notice, let alone appreciate.”
“Oh I’ve got this one, really interesting ability. Want to hear about it?”
She scowls. “Sure.”
“When people piss me off and threaten my loved ones, they fucking die. Science calls it JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE.”
Mary laughs, then she sighs the pleasure of the moment away. “Last chance now, Arashi. Give me the sword and stick around for the birth of a new world.”
“I’d rather see this sword stuck up your ass with your demented plan.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “Fine.”
-Brrang, brrang!-
The sounds came from the hallway, behind Charlie. He looks at the video screen, Ghost is flying backward away from the camera and the gun’s barrel. Every muscle in his body is gripped with a flood of endorphins, and he squeezes his sword’s handle so tightly that he dents the old, hard wood beneath its wrappings. As he blinks, he launches over July’s body toward Mary, howling a scream of rage.
The large roof over the second helipad is fully retracted, and Hector straps into one of the helicopter’s pilot seats. He prepares to lift off with ten gallons of the weaponized virus mixture and 10,000 coffee cover lids that have the same mixture applied to their undersides.
-tick, tick, tick-
He looks to his left, briefly to the gun barrel tapping at his window, then to the face of the person holding the gun.
Gabriel steps back, still aiming the M4 carbine at Hector. “Power down and step out.”
Fuck…must have been snooping around and heard the roof retract. He reaches his left hand out to the control panel, to make it look like he’s powering down, but instead he just clicks lights on and off for a moment. With his right hand, he unlatches the strap securing his Desert Eagle.
“Hey! Hands where I can see them, now step out!”
“Okay, okay, calm down.” Hector unbuckles and opens the door.
Gabriel steps closer to the door’s opening, maintaining aim.
Hector steps out, but purposely trips his foot on the landing rail of the helicopter. Instead of ca
tching himself, he falls. “Oof!”
Gabriel takes a step back and grabs the M4 with both hands, following Hector with the barrel to the ground.
Hector rolls, and his large pistol falls from its holster, right into his hand. In a motion almost too fast to see, he aims it at Gabriel and pulls the trigger. -BANG!-
Gabriel saw, and while diving to the side, also fires. -Brrrittt!-
The bullet from Hector’s .50 caliber pistol is a hunk of lead approximately a half of an inch in diameter. It rips into Gabriel’s left shoulder, missing the ribs and clavicle, but tearing through the flesh until it slams into the inner side of the shoulder blade. The bone catches the bullet and shatters.
With a single trigger pull on the M4, Gabriel sends three 5.56x45mm NATO rounds back at Hector. Each is only about one-fifth as massive as Hector’s bullet, but because there’s more gunpowder in each shell, the bullets travel at twice the speed from the barrel.
Only one of Gabriel’s three bullets hits Hector; it enters between his ribs on the right side, tears through the edge of the superior lobe of his right lung, and exits through his back. He bleeds out from two holes—and a little into his lungs—but no bones or major vessels are hit.
Both injured soldiers fall to their sides, roll with their momentum, and make for cover before shooting again. Hector moves toward the far wall while Gabriel cuts underneath the helicopter’s tail, then dives for a crate set near the door that leads to the passageway Hector came through.
Hector coughs up blood, but then he swallows it. “You’re a fast motherfucker! How about we call a truce here?”
While hiding behind the crate and listening to the helicopter’s rotors continue spinning, Gabriel breathes through the pain emanating from the massive shoulder wound. “Only if I know what I’m agreeing to!”
Hector slinks around the side of some stacked equipment and aims toward Gabriel. I could hit that foot, but that’ll just drag this on. “You’re agreeing to live! Just toss out your weapons!”
