by Lee Doty
“What did you choose, Jo?” Before we met, what did you choose?”
“I chose to kill.” Before her, terrified eyes jerk, then go dark.
“Listen to me Jo.” Smith put both hands on Jo’s shoulders, held them firmly, “Without the truth, there is no choice. Without the truth there is only slavery.” She paused, Jo cried silently, burned silently.
“But now.” Smith said, iron in the words, “Now you have the truth. Now you have a choice, and the only slavery that remains is to the past.”
“I can’t,” Jo sobbed, “I can’t.”
“Jo.” Smith said, voice hard, “The world is full of wolves and sheep. There is nothing evil about the wolf when it kills, it is just being what it was made to be.” She paused. “But there is nothing inherently good or superior about the sheep because it doesn’t kill… it too is being what it was made to be.”
Jo looked up, curious. That wasn’t what Jo had expected Smith to say next.
“Wolf or sheep, Jo. Don’t be fooled into thinking these are your only choices. What is good, what is beautiful,” Smith said with a controlled but intense passion, “Is when a wolf stands between the sheep and the other wolves.”
“Wolves don’t do that.” Jo said.
“No, Jo. People do. People are not animals. Like the sheep is not made to hunt, like the wolf is not made to graze, people are not made to be slaves. They are made to choose, they are made to act. You were not made to be a slave, Jo.”
Through the half-departed sorrow, a tendril of hot anger twisted through Jo’s chest. “Yes I was. I was made to be a slave.”
“Sure,” Smith said, releasing Jo’s shoulders and smiling, “If you accept one man can make another, then you were.”
There was a small explosion from outside the door, a breaching charge that took down Jeremy’s door. There was the explosion of a stun grenade from across the hall and another nearly simultaneous detonation from down the hall. Then came the sound of rushing footsteps as the invaders rushed through the doorway to Jeremy’s empty apartment across the hall.
“I can’t kill them.” Jo whispered desperately, “I won’t.”
“Then don’t.” Smith said. “You are not their slave anymore, Jo, and I won’t have you be mine.”
“What am I going to do?” Jo said, desperation pulling at the lines of her face.
“I guess we’re about to find out.” Smith said with a mischievous smile, then turned away and walked toward the back of the apartment, following Jeremy and Miss Pollack to the back bedrooms. At the mouth of the hallway, she turned back briefly and said, “I know you, Jo. You’ve got this.”
The look that Smith gave Jo was pure confidence, pure optimistic faith. “If you’re worried, you should at least know that I’m not.” She said, then disappeared down the hall, leaving Jo alone in the small living room.
“Great.” Jo muttered, with a small shake of her head. She tightened her grip on her stolen pistol and moved soundlessly to the side of the door to the hallway. She rested her left hand lightly on the wall to the left of the door and listened.
***
Jackie hurried down the stairwell, trying to keep up with the priest’s descent. When they got to the eighth floor, he rushed through the stairwell exit without slowing, letting the heavy metal door slam open, banging hard against its stops. Jackie did her best to keep up as the priest ran to the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hallway. Through the glass, the lighted windows of Jeremy’s building could be seen across the narrow alley.
The priest slowed, stalking cautiously up to the dark glass. He darted his head about, surveying the scene outside, then motioned for her to come. She arrived at the window, panting from their extended sprint.
“We don’t have much time.” He said, rechecking the boxy submachine gun that hung on its sling beneath his coat. “I’m going to need your help to get over there.”
“You going to swing over there like Batman or something?” Jackie said, looking out the window at the building across the alley.
“Who’s Batman?” He said, finishing his check and letting the weapon fall back into his coat.
“You know Bullwinkle but not Batman?” Jackie’s brow furrowed as she gave him an appraising glance.
He smiled, “Cartoons and documentaries.” He said cryptically.
“What?”
“That’s all the entertainment the Clerics allowed us in the Hollow. We actually thought that’s all the entertainment that ever existed.”
“The Hollow? But Batman has like three cartoon series.”
“Fake world where I used to live.” He said dismissively with a theatrical shrug, “If the Clerics didn’t allow it then it was because it had a moral premise or romantic elements.”
“I always think you’re putting me on.” Jackie gave him an appraising glance. “But I think I’m starting to realize you’ve been serious all along.”
He gave another theatrical shrug, “You’d have realized sooner if I didn’t spend so much time giggling and crying. Here’s what I need you to do.”
He told her, she was skeptical, but finally agreed.
“And what do you want me to do then?” She asked.
“Well, you’re not going to be able to give me much cover from here, if you try to make the crossing on the street, you’ll likely never see the sniper that blows your head off… you think you could follow me?”
The look she gave him was intense, but it made him laugh, “Okay then.” He said, “Sit it out waiting for your reinforcements or try to maybe cross through the alley?”
“What are you going to do?”
He gave her a look of pure sarcasm, “What do you think I’m going to do?”
“I think you’re going to fall to a horribly painful death right outside that window.” She said, returning his gaze.
He snorted and turned again to the window, looking about quickly, eyes lingering as he looked at the window across the alley and one floor down. Then he turned from her and jogged back down the hallway toward the elevators.
Jackie drew the assault gun from beneath her stolen coat and limbered it, doing another press check of the round in the chamber out of habit. She braced herself against the wall on the left side of the hallway, a little over a yard away from the window. When she was ready, she glanced quickly at the priest, who was standing in the middle of the hallway about forty feet away. She barely avoided laughing. He stood with an earnest expression, weight half lowered with one leg forward. In spite of her knowledge of the terror that he actually was, she could not help thinking that he looked like he was waiting for the starting gun at the Special Olympics.
He noticed how she was looking at him and gave her a patient look with just a hint of an eye roll. “You will not want to hang around that window after I’m through… if one of the snipers has a sight-line on it…” He made an expansive gesture with both hands, opening both fists and splaying his fingers in the air on both sides of his head. “Splat.” He concluded.
“Alright, Batman.” She said, tilting her head toward the window, “Let’s get on with this.”
“Ready… and, Now!” He said.
Most people, having been indoctrinated by action movies, think that you can jump through a high-rise window, or in this case, through two. If this were tried, Jackie knew, the result wouldn’t be a shattering of glass and another cool scene for the protagonist. The result would be a painful bounce—modern industrial windows are tough. Duh. Jackie spent seven rounds destroying the window, then took a quick step forward and spent another five rounds destroying the stairwell window a floor down on the other building. She stepped back, flattening herself to the wall just as the priest blurred by and flew out the window in a chorus of whipping cloth from his long black coat, just like Batman.
***
OSI Headquarters, Rural Virginia, 2019
Chrome moved with methodical precision around the corner into the destroyed foyer, covering the emerging room with his weapon. Hi
s nose and eyes burned and he could feel the coolness of the tears on his face, though they had finally stopped falling. As bad as the burning was in eyes, mouth and nose, the smell was a thousand times worse. The skirmishing ambush in the chemistry lab had been… regrettable.
The ambush had lasted less than ten seconds. Neither of the two remaining members of Phoenix had presented themselves. They had simply fired one burst from the hallway outside the lab that had driven Chrome’s team to cover behind the heavy quartz-topped lab table near a glass cabinet filled with containers of various chemicals. Unfortunately, the flashbang grenade behind the chemical cabinet had gone off just then. Chrome wasn’t sure how Phoenix had rigged that one, but after it had gone off, Phoenix had again disengaged, leaving Delta coughing, itching, burning, and smelling strongly of sulfur and ammonia.
At first, Chrome had clung to the idea that the composition of the chemicals the grenade had been placed behind was merely unfortunate, that the point of the placement of the grenade was to add the broken glass of the case and maybe even some dangerous chemicals to the blast of the stun grenade, but there had been three messages scrawled on walls since then making disparaging comments about how Delta now smelled. Some had primitive and frustratingly clever pictures scrawled in the same black marker used to deliver the first message over the spinning helmet in the hallway.
At Chrome’s signal, Delta fanned out into the large foyer. Within a minute, they’d cleared the room, finding only four dead guards that had been killed during the initial breach. They found nothing threatening and, thank the God of Purpose, nothing cleverly insulting.
Fleet, the team’s sniper had taken up a position near the destroyed fountain in the center of the lobby, using it for cover as he used the optics on his rifle to scan through the glass double doors leading outside. Zed, their tech went left around the big room’s perimeter, while Trunc, their close-quarters specialist moved right. Chrome stayed at the doorway, covering the whole room, and occasionally peeking his head around the edge of the doorway they’d just entered to insure that they were not surprised from behind. When the room was secured, they all moved to the fountain near Fleet.
“Status?” Chrome said, crouching next to the sniper.
“No contact.” Fleet reported. “But there is another message for us.” He gestured toward the doors. “I find it somewhat frustrating that they feel they have the time for these little touches.”
Chrome resisted grinding his teeth, resisted knocking Fleet’s teeth out. “That is the point, Fleet.” He said as if he found it amusing. “They’re attacking our morale because they can’t win a straight fight, and likely wouldn’t even be able to win in an ambush without Ash and Tink.” Chrome smiled as if he was enjoying this game, which was the exact opposite of the truth, but it was what the mantle of captain required, it was his only defense against Phoenix’s attack. “It’s what I would do in their place.”
Fleet didn’t say it, but Chrome could see the truth in his eyes. They both doubted that Chrome would have used this strategy, both doubted that he could have pulled it off if he’d been inclined. Chrome was efficient and talented, he was a natural leader, a talented tactician. He was resourceful.
But he was not Crow.
Chrome was not bound by orthodoxy, but his brilliant innovations were… well, more direct, less playful.
Chrome followed Fleet’s gesture toward the doors and saw the drawings. There was a large question mark with an arrow pointing away from it on each side. Above the left arrow was the word “die”. At the end of that arrow was a stick figure lying prone with an x for each eye with stink lines rising from it. Above the right arrow was the word “live” with a smiling stick figure in a shower. He was holding a bar of soap in one hand and giving a thumbs-up with the other.
“There can’t be information in that.” Trunc said, shaking his head. “They’d know which way we’d go, unless we started to second guess.”
“Yes.” Chrome said, though what he’d meant was “Obviously.”
“After they drew this, they likely went in a random direction.” Chrome continued, “The only purpose was to make us doubt, to make us hesitate, to attack our certainty, and through it, our faith.”
“What’s the plan?” Zed asked.
Chrome thought for a moment, “Depends on their motivation.” He said finally.
“Either they’re trying to keep us occupied until the OSI reinforcements come or they’re trying to get away.”
“If they’re trying to get away, they’re going about it all wrong.” Fleet said, still scanning through the glass doors with his rifle’s optics.
Chrome nodded, “Agreed.” He keyed the command channel and asked, “Command, do you have an ETA on the OSI’s reinforcements?”
There was a pause of a few seconds, then their cleric came on the channel, “Under ten minutes.”
“Can you delay them?”
“Their incoming force is overwhelming. Our artillery is off the table. The drones have been recalled. All support elements are now out of theater. You are on your own, Chrome.”
“Out.” Chrome said and turned to his team. “We’re alone. No support, and no surveillance. We’ve got an overwhelming hostile force less than ten minutes out.” Chrome saw the tension in the team in the subtle shifts of their eyes, the set of their faces, so he added, “And we’re stinky.”
There were several soft snorts and tight smiles all around, but the tension had been broken. “But we’ve been charged with eliminating the rest of Phoenix before this incursion ends.” He paused again to add weight to his words. “They are over. Done with. Their long reign at the top of the leaderboards ended today, no matter what happens next.”
There were smiles and some nods. Chrome continued, “The Clerics have cleared us for egress. We can leave now and return to the Hollow with the new first place slot secured.”
“Somehow,” Trunc said, “I don’t think that’s what you’re going to ask us to do.”
Chrome gave him a wicked smile and continued, “We could leave victorious, but we’ve been given a gift, the opportunity to take what is rightfully ours. To crush Phoenix and seize the crown, not simply pick it up when they dropped it. We’ve been given the gift to hunt Phoenix down, to take what is ours, to own it.”
“Phoenix has done everything so far to convince us that they want to draw us out, to insult us, to make us angry, to keep us interested in the pursuit. The next logical steps would be to wait in ambush out there and spend their lives trying to take ours.”
Chrome paused again, “But we all know that doing what is logical is not Phoenix’s way… we know they are subtle, that they innovate. I think they are trying to play us, to make us think that once they are out of the installation they will continue to lead us, insult us, try to shame us and distract us until our enemy’s reinforcements arrive. But I think what they will do now is run. I think that all of their actions to this point were to make us continue either blindly or methodically forward, giving them time to cross the open space to the tree line outside the fence.”
“Why?” Fleet asked.
“Call it intuition.” Chrome said, “But what it is, is knowledge not easily explained.”
“So, if they’re running, what are we waiting for?”
Chrome gave him a fierce smile, “Nothing.” He said and rose to his feet. “There are four of us and four points of the compass. I want us to split up, stay in radio contact, and find them before they can make a clean getaway.”
“Split up?” Trunc said dubiously, “If you’re wrong and they’re looking to take us apart, the only way they could do that is one or two at a time.”
“Do you see this move forecast by anything I’ve done before?” Chrome asked, smile still stretching his lips.
Trunc shook his head.
“Do you see this as a wise move based on Phoenix’s actions thus far, based on the tactical situation, or anything else?”
Trunc shook his head again. “Isn’t
that usually a great reason to not do it?”
“Yes.” Chrome said. “And it’s also going to work. Keep in radio contact and if we spot them crossing the field, we call Fleet and he makes stains out of them. Let’s move.”
***
Crow and Shadow sprinted across the large manicured field inside the tall double fence of the compound, running for the small, unobtrusive hole they’d made through both fences.
“Are you sure… are you sure that we had time for the drawings?” Shadow huffed between lungfuls of air.
“Oh come on.” Crow huffed, “That last one took twenty seconds… and it was… the longest by far.”
“You are a speed cartoonist.” Shadow agreed as they ran flat out. “I mean every second… counts.”
“Yeah…” Crow took two breaths and ate thirty yards before continuing, “But I’m sure it bought us twice that amount in extra caution and maybe even a needed motivational speech… besides…” Crow flicked Shadow a quick glance, “Can you imagine their faces?”
“Stop trying to make me laugh, chief.” Shadow panted. “Just so you can get to… that fence first.”
“Think how they looked when they saw…” Crow huffed, voice strained, “The little cartoon poop… on Chrome’s little… cartoon head.”
“My favorite…” Shadow responded, “Is thinking about how nice… they smell right now.”
The whistle-thud of the bullet that pinged off Crow’s shoulder armor was the first sign that there had been a hiccup in the plan.
***
“They’re two hundred yards from the fence!” Trunc shouted into the team channel. “They’re too far for me to be effective with .45 caliber ammunition, especially with these integrated suppressors! I need Fleet here with his rifle NOW!”
“Fleet!” Chrome shouted into the channel, “Move! Everyone else converge on Trunc’s position.”
He switched to the command channel, not slowing his sprint to the south through the compound, “We’ve located them and are in pursuit. How long till the hostile reinforcements arrive?”
