The December Protocol

by Devin Hanson

  “Your plan sucks!” Ruu shouted at him, flinching as the steel she was hiding behind dimpled under a bullet impact.

  “I’m improvising!” Min shouted back. “If you have a better idea, I’m all ears!”

  The gunfire stopped for a moment, and Min peeked out around the corner. There were three of them, two of them were reloading as the third covered them. Min jerked back around the corner as another salvo hammered into the pillar.

  Ruu was right. They were in a difficult position. For the life of him, though, Min couldn’t think of a way it could have gone differently. The gunmen advancing on them were professionals. Thugs and amateurs didn’t have the coordination to advance under cover fire. They were fighting mercenaries, ex-marines, probably.

  “They’re going to flank us,” Ruu called. Her voice was tight, but her brow was furrowed only with concentration. Whatever fear or nerves she had had were gone.

  Min cursed the regulations that restricted their load-out to monomol rounds. The mercenaries would have to come to within ten paces for the rounds to be effective. All the mercenaries had to do was hug the walls and they would be able to riddle Min and Ruu at their leisure.

  Ruu started shooting. Min glanced over, his mouth open to tell her to save her ammunition, but she wasn’t shooting at the approaching mercenaries. She was shooting up. The quality of the light changed abruptly. Biolumin strips set into the ceiling shattered under Ruu’s fire and rained down into the plaza.

  Capacitors in the broken strips shorted and vaporized, sending sparks arcing into the air along with boiling clouds of blue smoke. Min felt like cheering, but he was already out of cover and running in a crouch across the plaza.

  There was a muffled order, and a hail of bullets tore through the smoke, dragging threads of carbonized electronics in their wake. Min rolled to the ground, but the mercenaries were aiming at the pillar he had first taken cover behind, and were way off target.

  Blessing Ruu’s ingenuity, Min slid behind another pillar and held his sleeve to his face. The smoke was acrid and stung his eyes. Any second now, the fire suppression systems would kick on and coat everything in the plaza in foam. He had to make the most of his opportunity while it was available.

  A footstep grating on rock debris caught Min’s ear and he held his breath, not daring to inhale, lest he cough on the smoke and give away his position. A figure pushed through the smoke to Min’s right. It was a woman, her eyes locked on the pillar Min had originally been hiding behind. She held a pistol in a two-handed grip, her face lowered to the sights.

  Min let her pass him by then slipped out of cover quietly. He holstered his pistol and drew his knife as he came up behind her. In one motion he reached around and clamped a hand over her mouth, and rammed his blade hilt deep into her kidney. The mercenary screamed into his hand and bucked wildly. He held her head locked against his chest by brute strength and stabbed her in the neck. Hot blood splashed over his hand as he ripped the knife free. Her boots scrabbled wildly against the floor, but she was weakening fast.

  He risked a deep breath then hauled her back into the smoke before letting her fall to the ground. Biolumin shards crunched under his boots. The mercenary bubbled at his feet, but didn’t have the strength to cry out.

  The fire suppression system clicked on, sirens shrieked, and a mist of fine liquid sprayed down over everything in the plaza. Even while it was still in the air, the liquid expanded into foam, blanketing everything and sweeping the smoke out of the air in an instant.

  Min was ready for it, his pistol out and aimed. As the foam rained down, Min caught sight of the closest mercenary, not ten feet to his left. Reflexes drove his motions on automatic. Min pivoted and fired, two rapid shots in center mass, then one considered shot in the head. Before the mercenary had hit the ground, Min was already spinning, searching for the last one.

  He needn’t have bothered. Ruu came out from behind a pillar and dropped the last man with a rapid double-tap to the head. In the even blanket of white foam, the explosive bleeding of head trauma was a crimson marker where the mercenaries had died. Then a fresh layer of foam fell and obliterated any trace of them.

  Min panted from his exertions. The air was still harsh with the smell of smoke. He and Ruu stared at each other. They were covered in foam from head to toe. She had a stupid grin on her face and it took Min a minute to realize he had a matching grin himself.

  “Nice improvisation,” Min said. His voice came out flat, the foam soaking up almost all the sound. Even the fire alarm sirens were hushed, like they were too lazy to be properly loud.

  “You fight well for an old man.”

  “I’d laugh,” Min said, “but you’re not funny.”

  “Come on, you’re just mad my plan worked better than yours did.”

  Min rolled his eyes. “We need to move.”

  He led the way out of the plaza, wading through the hip-deep foam. It was already drying out, sloughing off their clothing in sheets and lumps. They made it to a hallway where the fire suppressant hadn’t sprayed. The last clinging lumps of foam cracked away and dissolved into dust, leaving behind a faint scent of chemical disinfectant.

  Doors were opening in the hallway and people were sticking their heads out, staring at the plaza covered in foam. A few of them were looking at Min and Ruu, taking in their clothing still white with powder. The foam in the plaza would linger for several more minutes before finally breaking down. The bodies would be revealed then, and Min wanted to be well away by the time that happened.

  “Dr. Lenbroke’s apartment?” Ruu asked.

  Min nodded. He fixed his bearings and pointed down the hallway. “This way, then to the left.”

  Min led the way. He didn’t know what they’d find in Dr. Lenbroke’s apartment, but for the moment, he didn’t have any other clues to follow.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TV interview on a talk show, in August of 2102, six years before the Helix Rebuild became a reality. The host is laughing, following the production agenda to mock the idea of human immortality. Dr. Everard is quietly intense, no humor on her face or in her manner.

  “Oh come now, immortality? This is real life, doc, not science fiction.”

  “Is it so hard to believe? In the bible, people lived for centuries. I believe the human body is capable of complete regeneration if only it is reminded how. Stem cells are producing miracle cures every day. All that is needed is a catalyst to prompt the body into creating a massive bolus of new stem cells. Fresh DNA and unlimited stem cells would be enough to completely cure any cancer or damaged organ. And if that is so, I don’t see why the effect wouldn’t also cause immortality. What is old age but the gradual failure of the body to fix itself?”

  “The bible? Next you’ll tell us God has given you the formula!” He pauses for the laugh track. “Seriously though, who wants to live forever, anyway?”

  Angeline woke to the sound of a distant fire alarm. She was curled up in a corner of a room. After so long spent in a cage, it was strange having open space around her. Her toe throbbed and her muscles were cold and stiff. In the dim light coming under the door, her toe was a clot of partially dried blood with her torn nail jutting out of it.

  Painfully, Angeline climbed to her feet, drawn to the light coming from under the door. She didn’t know what time it was or how long she had been asleep. She walked over to the door, every other step leaving behind a bloody print. She was limping heavily and only walking on the outside of her injured foot. Even so, every step sent a fresh wave of pain spiking up her leg.

  There were distant bangs, barely audible over the sound of the alarm. Were those gunshots? She felt a cautious stirring of hope and quickly squashed it down. The only ones she knew of with guns were the kidnappers. If she went running to the gunshots, in all likelihood they would just shoot her or capture her again.

  She could walk easily, if painfully. The searing pain of her toenail being ripped off had settled to a hot throb. Delicately,
she touched the nail sticking up from her big toe at a right angle. It felt numb, but there was a twinge of pain at the base. Angeline thought about tearing it off, but just imagining the resulting pain made her break out into a cold sweat and her hands shake. She couldn’t do it.

  Angeline had to move. She had to get out of this room and do something. It wasn’t logical, but just the feeling of being stuck inside a room drove her nearly into a panic. It was like being stuck inside the cage all over again.

  She opened the door and peeked out, squinting against the bright light. She found she was looking into some sort of maintenance office. Shelves of machinery parts ran along one wall. A fabrication workshop took up most of the room, with an industrial-sized acrylic printer dominating the space. The printer head was whirring around, moving and rotating on a three-axis gimbal, printing out a replacement part for something.

  A bowl of soup had been left out on the table next to the printer with steam rising from it. Someone had been in here only moments ago, probably pulled away by the sirens and the gunshots. Her stomach cramped at the smell. Feeling guilty, she entered the room and ate the soup, bolting it down, careless of the spills and mess she was making. It was the best soup she had ever had.

  Angeline drained off the last of the broth with a sigh. There hadn’t been much left in the bowl, but she felt energy pouring back into her. Muscles she hadn’t been aware of relaxed in her back and legs, and even the pain in her foot eased and became more tolerable.

  Whoever was running the printer would come back soon to finish his lunch. Angeline wiped her face with the hem of her shirt and made her way through the maintenance office to the door. She opened it and stuck her head out. There were people out there and she flinched away, her heart hammering.

  It took her nearly a full minute before she worked up the courage to look again. Yes, there were people out there, but none of them were paying any attention to her. They seemed intent, moving quickly away from the sound of the siren. Even as Angeline watched, the last person ran around a corner down the hallway and disappeared. A distant door slammed.

  Angeline inched through the door. She had never felt so alone. Even crawling through the air vents with her last friend dead behind her, she had been distantly aware of other people trying to find her. Now, limping down the deserted hallway, it was like she was the only living person left in the cluster.

  She had two options. Instinct told her to run, to hide, and hope everything just went away. Instinct wanted her to turn her back and flee deeper into the cluster, away from anything human. Instead she went the other way, toward the sirens. It was dangerous. Loud noise would draw her captors. But it was also the direction toward the escalators and freedom.

  She made it to the hallway junction that led to the escalator plaza. She heard movement ahead, and came to a stop at the corner. Angeline peeked around. There were maybe a dozen people in the plaza, wading through ankle-deep drifts of white powder. In the center of the plaza under a section of destroyed ceiling biolumen strips, a line of people were lying on the ground.

  It took her a moment to realize the people were dead. The white powder was caked to their wounds, making everything look cleaner than it should. There seemed to be two groups of people in the plaza, not counting the dead ones. The first were loud, angry men with guns, arguing amongst themselves. The other group was quiet, afraid, clumped together.

  Angeline was torn. The men with guns she didn’t trust at all. She automatically clumped them in with her captors though she had never seen them before. Two of the other group wore the brown uniform coveralls of maintenance workers, and she guessed the people without guns were concerned citizens or maybe there to turn off the fire alarm and clean up the powder.

  Beyond both groups, the escalators ran up into the rock, leading to the level above. The plaza was thirty yards across, a distance she could cross in a short sprint. Then, once she was on the escalator, she could ride it up to the top level and find the police kiosk. Safety was only a short dash away.

  Except the men with guns were in the plaza. Angeline gripped her stunrod with white-knuckled desperation. If she was lucky, she could take one out with the stunrod before they realized she had it. But there were three of them. And they all had guns.

  She weighed the possibility that the other group would assist her and dismissed it. They wouldn’t get in her way, but she could tell by the way they treated the first group with deference that they wouldn’t challenge the guns. Not for some girl they didn’t know.

  The proximity of the escalators ached within her. She was so close. She longed to make the sprint and pray that she would make it to the escalator. A month ago, she might have tried it. She would have sprinted across the plaza, and trusted her life to God. A month ago, she would have died, or been captured again, which was the same thing.

  Her time in the cage had taught her a bitter truth about life and God. There was no-one but herself that she could blame, and there was no-one but herself that she could rely on. God helped those who helped themselves. If she ran out into the plaza, trusting blindly, God would turn a blind eye to her fate.

  So she waited. She pulled back around the corner and leaned against the cold stone. She could hear the men arguing in the plaza. They were discussing whether it would be right to call the police. The civilians thought it a necessary action, the gunmen argued it was a fine idea, but should be delayed for a time.

  Suddenly, a shout snapped Angeline out of a half-doze. She looked around the corner and saw a pair of policemen riding the escalator down into the lobby. They had their guns out, covering the kidnappers. Angeline wanted to shout with happiness and run out into the lobby right then. Something made her hold back though and strain to hear what was being said.

  “I swear, officer, we didn’t kill these men! Look, those are monomol rounds! Some psycho got ahold of police ammunition and killed them!”

  Another of the kidnappers said, “Yeah, they’re our friends. Co-workers. We’re working a protection gig, someone is out trying to kill our employer!”

  One of the policemen held up his hand, cutting off the earnest explanations. “Who’s in charge here?”

  A gunman stepped forward. “I guess that’s me. I’m the leader of our patrol.”

  The policeman holstered his gun and pulled out his tablet, flipping it open so he could take notes. “Start from the beginning. What did you hear, what did you see?”

  Angeline couldn’t believe it. The police weren’t arresting them or anything! She was already out from around the corner and walking toward the plaza before she realized what she was doing. Surely the police would protect her. Even if they didn’t, she could just get on the escalator and ride it out of there. The kidnappers couldn’t do anything while the police were standing there watching them.

  One of the gunmen saw her and his eyes went wide. He nudged his companion and nodded in Angeline’s direction. The other gunman saw her then they both turned their heads to look at the two policemen.

  The police weren’t paying attention. One was taking notes while the other had his back to Angeline. He had his gun out still, but he held it loosely, clearly no longer on his guard.

  Angeline broke into a run. Her toe spiked pain up her leg and she felt fresh warmth leaking out under her foot. Every other footstep was sticky with blood and the white powder stuck to her foot and stung the raw flesh where her nail had torn off. She ignored the pain. She was halfway across the plaza now. One of the workers saw her and gasped, pointing a finger.

  The policeman taking notes turned and saw her. Concern flashed across his face. Angeline wondered what she looked like. It had been several days since she had the chance to clean herself. Her hair was knotted and straggly. Her shirt, her only item of clothing, was filthy and stained.

  “Help!” she called. “I need help!”

  Both policemen were looking at her now. The second officer holstered his gun and started toward her. Behind him, Angeline saw the gunmen trade looks,
and then the policeman was standing over her, reaching out with both arms to catch her.

  His face exploded. One second he was standing in front of Angeline, his face smiling kindly at her, and the next second, blood was showering down on Angeline and the policeman toppled forward on top of her. She fell beneath his dead weight. Pain in her foot lanced up her leg and she screamed, partly in pain, partly in horror.

  Angeline’s ears were ringing. There were more gunshots, then the throaty hammering of a fully automatic weapon. Angeline struggled out from under the dead policeman. Blood was in her eyes and she couldn’t see. Her foot was burning with pain but she hardly felt it. Panic swamped her and she desperately kicked free of the heavy policeman’s body.

  She scrambled to her feet, scrubbing at her face. The white powder had stuck to the blood and was clotting in her hair, on her hands, all over her face. Blindly, she ran for the escalators, but a strong arm caught her around the midriff and she felt herself lifted off the ground.

  Angeline remembered the stunrod dangling from her wrist. She powered it up and swung it blindly, felt the head impact with something. The arm around her waist jerked and she fought free, kicking and punching wildly. Her throat was sore and she realized she was screaming.

  Her vision cleared just enough for her to make out the escalators and she ran again for them. She didn’t make it more than two steps before a great weight slammed into her and brought her crashing to the ground. She groaned, the wind knocked out of her. The stunrod had been knocked from her hand, but the strap was still around her wrist. She felt a knee on her back, pinning her down and she groped through the drifts of powder until she felt the cold, hard handle of the stunrod again.

  She swung it backward and a strong hand caught her wrist. The stunrod was jerked away and her wrist was twisted up behind her back. Angeline struggled, but the weight and strength of the man on her was impossible to overcome. A hand slammed into the side of her head and the world spun. Her limbs went limp. She couldn’t muster the concentration to fight back.