“Well, drown me in a watery hell,” Visola whispered as she worked her arms to drag herself upward. “How do land-dwellers get anywhere? This would be so much easier if the elevator shaft was just filled with water. I’d swim for a few minutes and be at the top of the building.” She placed her foot on a higher point and began to shift her weight onto it when her boot slipped. Her breath caught in her throat as she caught her entire body weight on three fingertips curled around a piece of metal. Luckily, her armored gloves provided plenty of grip. Quickly, she repositioned her feet and hands to better support herself. She turned back to look down to the bottom of the elevator shaft, which was becoming increasingly far away. “Fiddlesticks,” she said glumly, “and if you fall ten stories in water, your head doesn’t smash open. You just kind of float down gracefully, like a feather.”
15th floor.
She had climbed this far before it seemed that people had stumbled upon the three dead bodies she had left on the third floor. They had found the opening in the elevator shaft, and were forcing the doors open further, and shining their flashlights up the elevator shaft. Visola quickly began using her crowbar again to open up the elevator doors to the fifteenth floor.
“Hey, I think I see her! She’s here!” shouted one of the men. “Open fire!”
She managed to slip between the doors just as bullets began to fly upward into the elevator shaft. One bullet nicked her thigh, nearly knocking her off balance. “Nice,” she said with contentment, as she used her thumb and forefinger to pick the hot projectile out of her armor. She was experimenting with a new style of protective clothing called ‘liquid armor’ that was supposedly better than plain old Kevlar. The layers of Kevlar in the armor were soaked in a substance called polyethylene glycol. She was very impressed with the result. I should order mass production of this for my armies back home. This thought automatically popped into her head before she remembered that she no longer controlled any armies, and no longer had a place she called home. This thought ruined her excitement at the armor, and motivated her back into action. Rising to her feet, Visola tucked her crowbar and climbing gear back into her backpack. She ran to the north side of the hallway, and retrieved a few canisters of tear gas from her backpack. She opened the stairway door and tossed them down the center of the staircase. With a grin, she knocked on the door closest to her. A few seconds later, a fat man opened the door, in the middle of snacking on a bag of potato chips.
“Hey! You’re pretty,” he said happily. “Do you live on this floor? We should hang out sometime, but I’m not sharing my food. I’m really low on supplies since we lost power and everything in my fridge went bad.”
Visola rolled her eyes, already having walked past the man and made her way onto his balcony. She did not need climbing gear for the outside of the building, for the balconies provided a natural staircase. Combined with her natural height, she could climb up onto the railing, using the wall for support, and just barely grasp the bottom of the balcony above. Her thick gauntlets helped to protect her hands from chafing or bruising on the concrete and metal. Visola was already two stories above the fifteenth floor when the fat man finally waddled to his balcony and stuck his head out the window.
“Hey! You didn’t take my number!” he shouted. “Don’t you want to hang out sometime? I have some great movies on Blu-ray! My phone number is 305-469…”
Visola ignored the man as he shouted out the digits desperately. She continued to climb swiftly, shoving her body upward with her leg muscles and pulling with her arm muscles.
“Call me!” the man shouted. “Promise you’ll call!”
“If you shut the fuck up, maybe I…” Visola trailed off in confusion. What was she saying? Why was she bothering to be nice? “Look, buddy,” she shouted down five stories. “You’re hideous, dumb, and socially impaired. You’re not going to get laid unless you pay for it, and you’re never going to get a girlfriend. Stop trying.”
The fat man looked up with great sadness on his face. “But… I have a good job. I’m a computer programmer for a really big company. I can cook you a great tuna casserole, and I have the high score on…”
Visola pulled out her smaller handgun and shot the man in the head. She then returned it to its holster and began swiftly climbing once more. Her stomach growled at the mention of the tuna casserole. Why was it that unusual battle situations always made her so unbelievably hungry? She tried to get the delicious image of tuna casserole out of her mind. In fact, she had never seen or tasted said dish, but her imagination was quick to taunt her nose and stomach with hypothetically tantalizing smells of warm food being baked in an oven.
“Damn,” she muttered as she continued to climb, “should have let him live and gotten me some tuna casserole.” She was feeling a little out of breath from all the physical exertion. Breathing the air simply did not fuel her body the way the water always had in similar circumstances. Climbing the balconies also seemed unnecessarily tedious, and she wished once again that the building was submerged. She thought longingly of the protein bars sitting comfortably in her backpack, but she preferred to keep moving. She was considering taking another Benzedrine tablet instead when she heard noises below, and more shots being fired. She had been in the middle of ascending to another balcony, but she dove into the middle of the one she was on, crashing into the resident’s plastic patio furniture. The concrete bottom of the balcony provided excellent cover, and she had a moment to re-assess her plan. She had gained another eight floors since shooting the fat man, before the soldiers had forced their way into his apartment on the fifteenth floor.
28th floor.
She was vaguely reminded of a video game that Kaito and Glais used to play. She had taken a stab at it when the young boys had gone to bed, and found it highly addicting. And convenient. One needed only to press a button to change weapons, or run, or climb things. One only needed to press another button to fire the weapons, or aim. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier if I could just press a button?” she whispered. Then she shook her head. “Nah. I like the challenge. Over halfway there! Keep on moving, Visola. Now the fun really starts.” Opening the balcony door to let herself into the apartment, she found an elderly woman reading a book. The woman promptly screamed. This time, the soldiers were a lot quicker to respond, and had already begun trying to break down the door. Visola dove behind the couch, and retrieved a grenade from her backpack. She pulled the pin out, and tossed it toward the door, immediately plugging her ears with her fingers and tightly shutting her eyes.
Her timing could not have been more perfect, for just as the men broke down the door, the grenade detonated, sending the heavy door flying right back at them. They had not been prepared for this, and they were all either unconscious or stunned. There were over half-a-dozen men in the small unit.
Visola stood up and shook her head in disappointment. She looked over to the elderly woman who seemed to be having a mild panic attack, and difficulty breathing. “These boys are such amateurs, aren’t they?” she asked, but of course, the woman was in no condition to respond. Visola pulled out her gun and moved to the doorway. She began to quickly dispose of the ones who had not been entirely killed with the grenade, and make sure that the ones who were unconscious were actually dead. After glancing both ways in the hallway to check if the coast was clear, she dropped to one knee and studied the armor of these men. It was slightly more advanced than the ones on the third floor. As expected, the army and CIA had chosen to deploy more advanced and specialized troops closer to the top of the building. Some of them even had heavy ballistic shields, but it had not been enough to protect them from the grenade.
“Don’t worry,” Visola told the men, tapping her backpack smugly. “There’s much more where that came from.” For a moment she had difficulty deciding which way to go. She had already tried the stairs, the elevator shaft, and the exterior of the building. She was running out of cool ways to safely scale the structure. The whole point of her mission, however, was not e
ntirely to get to the top of the building. She would, one way or another. She would either walk up there and deliver a clever greeting to the director of the CIA and a high-ranking army general in style, or she would get shot, and beat up, and dragged up there in a humiliating state. It did not really matter—the result was the same. She just wanted to take out as many significant troops as possible before reaching her destination.
It simply made her feel better.
When the stairway to her left opened, and a new faction of men began to move toward her, she bounced off the ground rapidly toward them. She deflected the weapon of the first man as it fired and shoved her boot into his shield, catching him off guard and making him stumble backward. He fell behind the door to the stairway, and Visola did not have time to think before she reached for a grenade on her belt. It had worked so well a few seconds before, that she could not resist trying it again. She used one hand to pull the pin and lob it down the stairs before shutting the door. Her only regret was that she had no time to wave goodbye. She turned and ran across the hall in the opposite direction, vaulting over bodies as the second explosion happened. Some people had begun to filter out of their apartments and into the hallway after hearing the initial explosion, so she had to weave around the curious and anxious civilians. Her ears were slightly ringing from the second explosion for she had not been able to cover them, but she could see a SWAT team headed directly at her from the other side of the hallway. They all wore night-goggles and carried heavy, intimidating-looking shields.
Visola’s lips curled upward in the beginning of a smile. She was finally feeling some of that adrenaline. How she had missed it! Putting her hands to her hips, she retrieved two guns. She began firing as she ran toward the men. She ducked around people, using their bodies as her shields and cover. She would fire at the soldier’s head with one gun, while aiming at his ankles with the other gun. The shields were not large enough to cover the entire bodies of the men, so she always had a place to hit. She was surprised when she was able to take out at least five men, but still saw a huge line of warriors marching down the hallway. She had to duck into an open apartment for a moment, to reload. Screaming civilians were running past her in a frenzy, including a hysterical woman in pajamas with horrible bed hair. Visola smiled, and having finished reloading, grabbed the woman, and moved into the hallway. She walked forward slowly with the woman as her hostage, and was surprised when the woman was instantly pumped full of bullets. The Americans had not even tried to avoid shooting their own citizen. Instead, they had attempted to shoot directly through her to get to Visola.
The red-haired warrior looked down, and found that at least three bullets had made their way to her body armor. However, after traveling through the hysterical woman, the bullets had been slowed down a great deal, and Visola had hardly felt them. However, the poor American woman had been killed, and was currently bleeding all over Visola.
“That sucks,” she said in disappointment. Her shield had been much more interesting when she was alive, and making hilarious screaming noises. Visola suddenly felt like the open air behind her was very cold and empty. She knew that this instant discomfort was a strong sign that she was about to be attacked from behind, and she threw her body to the ground, pulling the hysterical woman down with her. Her eyes widened, for as usual, instinct was right. On the other side of the hallway, which she thought had been emptied with grenades, some soldiers had set up an M2 Browning machine gun, the small, modern equivalent of a cannon, which they were using to fire an impossible barrage of bullets at the place where she had just been standing. Trying to carefully maneuver out from under her female shield, Visola crawled very close to the ground—slithered really—and ducked her way into the nearby open apartment. A few of the large caliber bullets from the heavy machine gun had grazed her arms and her side. However, she realized with a chuckle, that most of those bullets had been fired directly at the SWAT team. Even with their impressive shields, those bullets must have made a dent.
While Visola had always loved close-quarters combat, and did have a strong urge to pop back out and go hand-to-hand with the SWAT team, she did realize that the situation on the 28th floor was way too hot. Regretting the fact that she was being repetitive, she pulled the pin out of another grenade, and tossed it down the hallway at the SWAT team. She closed and bolted the apartment door before rushing to the balcony and beginning to climb again. Having gotten the motion down perfectly right, her climbing speed was a lot faster. She had scaled another six stories when she heard the noise and saw the lights of a helicopter approaching. She cursed.
“That’s not fair,” she said, ducking into an apartment and hiding behind the curtains. The lights from the searching helicopter caused shadows to dance across her face. Visola frowned. “I didn’t bring any rocket launchers.” She sighed in frustration as she surveyed the situation.
34th floor.
Visola’s fingers twitched, in an instinctive urge to reach for her phone. Part of her had a yearning to call Bimini for help. She could probably have a dozen fighter jets surrounding this building within a few minutes. She could win. She could win with flying colors.
There was absolutely no need for her to do this alone. Nearby, off the coast of Florida, was the thriving new settlement in the Bermuda Triangle. Less than 60 miles away, Visola had massive armies at her disposal. Although she was technically no longer in command, she had lived there and trained with the men for years, and worked closely with each battalion. She knew that she could swim into the military base and retake control of her troops, and that they would follow her orders. However, this did not seem like the right thing to do. If she used Oceanic forces to fight her personal fight, she would be starting a war.
This was no one’s fight but her own. She did not mind being alone. It made it easier to do what needed to be done, knowing that no one else would suffer the consequences. It made it easier to detach herself from her past. There was only looking forward from this point on.
Moving back further into the apartment, she considered what to do about the helicopter. She felt temporary jealousy of the heavy machine gun, and considered going back down to the 28th floor to steal it and use it on the flying menace. She then considered trying to use her rifle to shoot the pilot of the helicopter, or lobbing a grenade into the cockpit once it got close enough, but she decided that it was not important. Her efforts were probably best spent on continuing to fight her way to the top of the building. Turning to look at the apartment she had entered, she froze in her tracks.
The sight before her made her heart skip a beat.
The room was mostly dark, but sitting in the shadows was a small child, curled up into a little ball. Hugging her knees and whimpering, the small girl stared up at Visola with frightened eyes. One of her tiny fists was clutching the hand of a teddy bear.
“Where’s my mommy?” the little girl asked. Her lip was quivering. “When is my mommy coming back?”
Visola stared blankly.
“There was a big boom,” the little girl said. “Everything was shaking. I’m scared. I want my mommy.”
Visola’s mouth had gone very dry. Her eyes were magnetically drawn to the teddy bear.
“Why did you buy her this, Vachlan? It’s an utterly useless piece of fluff!”
“For Christ’s sake, woman. Can’t your child own one solitary item that isn’t meant for self-defense?”
“Sure,” Visola said, pinching Vachlan’s arm with a playful smirk. “She can own things that are meant to kill and main in offense!”
“Yes, but she needs things that are soft and safe,” Vachlan said, nuzzling his wife’s neck. “She needs something to love, and talk to when she’s lonely, and cuddle at night.”
“Duh,” Visola had responded. “That’s why I made her a twin brother. He can be her real-life teddy bear until he gets too large.”
“But this!” Vachlan said, holding up the teddy bear. “It is inanimate. This will force her to use her imagination. She
can give it a name and create a personality for the dashing fellow. I mean, look at that charming bowtie. He must be a Winston or a Theodore or a Radcliffe…”
“You can encourage her artistic side all you want, as long as you remember that her martial knowledge comes first. She needs to stay alive. I already had one daughter who had great difficulty with that feat.”
Visola stumbled forward, toward the little girl and the bear that was identical to her daughter’s stuffed animal. She found herself tripping over the coffee table and lurching forward, onto the rug. She was confused when she caught herself, putting her hand down in the thick beige carpet. She noticed a dark substance dripping onto the rug, and lifted a hand to a pain in her side that she had previously ignored. She was able to finger a large hole in her armor, and warm wetness began soaking through the fabric of gloves. One of the large bullets from the M2 Browning had pierced right through her armor. It seemed that liquid-coated Kevlar was not enough to stop the same bullets that were meant to take down airplanes and ships.
This surprised Visola. She felt that her body was far greater than airplanes or ships, and it was a little embarrassing that she could also be taken down by a few bullets. She thought that she had moved quickly enough to avoid all of the projectiles, and had not even noticed getting struck. She looked up at the little girl in the corner, and the child and the bear began to grow blurry in her vision. The child seemed to have light brown hair. Maybe even reddish-brown. It was too dark to tell. The bear was identical. Visola’s mind started to twist the child into the identical form as well, painting her the correct cheekbones and grey eyes.
“Did you get an ouchie?” the little girl said with concern. She rose to her feet and ran to the kitchen, her little feet going pitter-patter on the hardwood floor of the stylish apartment.
Visola watched curiously as the child stood on her tippy-toes in order to reach the drawer with the Band-Aids. When the girl returned with the box, she pulled out a small bandage and began to remove its wrapper. She concentrated carefully as she pulled the plastic off the sticky parts of the Band-Aid, before stepping forward and looking at Visola’s face. There was a bleeding gash across the side of Visola’s cheek. She was not sure how she had received that wound either; possibly from a grazed bullet, grenade shrapnel, or the hand-to-hand fighting.
Maelstrom Page 14
