Mega 6: No Man’s Island

by Jake Bible

  “Yes, Ms. Thorne, you are,” Aubrey agreed. “Which is what I was going to do before you started losing your shit on me. Will it be too much if I request you shut up and listen from here on out? There is a lot I need to show you and a lot you need to understand before we get to our destination. Ballantine needs you focused on the task at hand. There is a reason you weren’t in the Toyshop nor were you included with the others that were taken onto the Resurrection.”

  “Yeah, because I got away and killed some sons of bitches in the process,” Kinsey said. “They weren’t going to take me or Gun. No fucking way.”

  “Exactly,” Aubrey said. “Ballantine knew you’d only end up fighting if you were brought up on deck. He was right.”

  “I could have been killed doing that fighting,” Kinsey said. “Same with Gun. Shit, Nivia did die.”

  “True. Very true. And it sucks that the woman died. Ballantine will hate that it happened.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be too broken up over it. He’s pretty fucking used to getting people killed.”

  Aubrey eyed Kinsey for a moment.

  “What?” Kinsey snapped.

  “I don’t think you know who Ballantine is,” Aubrey said. “Yes, the guy has a very flexible outlook on the ethical aspects of killing, but he doesn’t ever want people to die. I’m a perfect example of that.”

  “What does that mean?” Kinsey asked.

  “Let me show you,” Aubrey said and pushed the hair away from her ears. Or the places on her head where her ears should have been.

  “Jesus Christ,” Kinsey said. “How’d that happen?”

  “Ballantine cut them off,” Aubrey said.

  “He fucking what?” Kinsey exclaimed. “Lady, you are not selling the trust Ballantine shtick.”

  “He was supposed to kill me,” Aubrey said. “He was supposed to take me out per his orders from superiors. Kill me and he was included in the inner circle of the company. He would gain access to intel and systems that only a handful of people had access to.”

  “You fought him off?” Kinsey asked.

  “No, I let him take my ears instead of taking my life,” Aubrey said and let her hair fall back into place. “Ms. Thorne, please listen to me when I say your part in all of this is the last chapter of a story Ballantine has been writing for years and years. I only arrived in the middle. The man has had a hyper-focused plan that he has been executing despite all the hardships he has been through. What I need for you to do is trust that Ballantine knows what’s best for all of us.”

  “That’s a pretty damn big fucking ask, lady,” Kinsey said.

  “Then how about a smaller one?” Aubrey said. “Trust me. I have been training for this moment for years. This ship is ready to go do what it was designed to do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Take out Wire and her people. Take over the island she has and establish a new order amongst the covert ops companies and community. Get Ballantine where he needs to be to stop all the madness that has been ripping apart lives for decades.”

  “That’s what you’re here to do?” Kinsey laughed. “You and what army?”

  Aubrey’s face broke into a true and honest smile.

  “I was hoping you’d ask that question,” Aubrey responded. “How about I show you exactly what army.”

  Chapter Nine: Right Place, Right Time

  Max grunted as he was thrown into the cage. He slid a few feet before colliding with the back bars. The cage was one of many that dotted the wide open deck in the middle of the ship. Above the cages were catwalks where guards patrolled regularly, always at least four on duty at one time, their rifles at the ready in case one of the cages’ occupants got lucky and tried to escape.

  “Ow,” Max said as he rolled onto his back and stared up at the bright halogen banks that filled the deck’s ceiling. “No fun, y’all. No fun.”

  “What’d they ask you?” Shane asked from two cages over. He was lying on his back as well, but had his eye closed. “They didn’t ask me shit.”

  “Me neither, bro,” Max replied. “Beat me for what, an hour? Then let me sit there and bleed for another hour. That’s it.”

  “Thirty minutes,” Darby said.

  Her cage was unique. It was suspended by a multitude of chains and steel bars above the others. There were several snipers lined up on a second set of catwalks, their weapons pointed at her only.

  “No way. It was more than thirty minutes,” Max argued.

  “Thirty minutes,” Darby said and turned away from him, her eyes taking in each sniper one by one as she looked up and studied the second tier catwalks. “Gonna kill them soon.”

  “Might not want to alert them to that,” Shane said, his eye still closed.

  “Won’t matter,” Darby said. “Alert them or not, they’re all are going to die.”

  “Shut your mouths!” a guard snapped from the first tier of catwalks. “Keep talking and we start cutting out tongues!”

  “Yikes,” Max said. He grunted and rolled over as he tried to get comfortable on the cage floor. He couldn’t make it happen so he gave up after a couple of minutes. “Darby? How are you so chill in that thing up there? Those bars on the bottom must be cutting into your ass something fierce.”

  “Something fierce? What are you, Anne of fucking Green Gables?” Shane laughed. “My dick stings something fierce, sir. My farts smell of ostrich eggs something fierce. Oh, my lord, I’m going to stab a bitch something fierce.”

  “Boys? Knock it off,” Thorne said from his cage.

  There were echoes of the sentiment around the deck as other crew members chimed in.

  “I said shut up!” the guard bellowed again and gave a high whistle. All weapons turned on the cages.

  “We’ll quiet down,” Thorne said.

  “I didn’t say quiet down, I said to shut up!” the guard yelled.

  “I can’t guarantee that will happen,” Thorne replied. “Trust me. I’ve tried for decades to get those two to stop talking and nothing has worked.”

  “Maybe if they know they’ll die they’ll start listening!” the guard shouted.

  “Nope,” Max said.

  “Yeah, death threats roll right off us,” Shane added.

  “You think you’re the first one to say they’d kill us if we don’t be quiet?” Max laughed. “Bitch, please.”

  “Please and thank you, bitch,” Shane said.

  “Yes, and thank you, bitch,” Max said.

  “Boys,” Thorne hissed.

  There was a gunshot and the deck went quiet and still. Then, “You missed, dipshit.”

  “Didn’t even come close.”

  “Were you actually aiming? Or was that a lame attempt at a warning shot?”

  “I think he shot himself.”

  “Probably. I’m not hearing his idiot voice shouting at us anymore.”

  “Do you think we drove him to suicide?”

  “You’re about to drive me to suicide!” Thorne shouted. “Boys! Stop!”

  “Jeez, Uncle Vinny, take a chill.”

  “And a pill, Uncle Vinny.”

  “You want to play?” the guard said as he climbed down from the catwalk and strode towards Shane. “You two think you can be glib and get away with it?”

  “Dude, did he just use the word glib?” Shane asked.

  “I think he did,” Max responded. “Next he’s going to ask us if we want an egg cream for dessert after we down our bowl of gruel mush stuff.”

  “I’m hungry,” Shane said as the guard stood before his cage. “Hey, man, when’s chow time?”

  The guard leveled his rifle at Shane and sneered. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

  “Hey!” Max yelled. “Dude! Your magazine isn’t even fully seated! I can see space, dude!”

  The guard glanced down at his magazine. It was fully seated.

  “Whatever, ass—”

  He didn’t get to finish as Shane leapt to his feet and reached through the bars, grabbing the barrel of the rif
le and yanking it forward then back several times. The butt of the rifle connected with the guard’s face over and over until the man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to the ground.

  “Hey, will ya look at that?” Shane said as he eased the rifle through the bars. “I got me a gun.”

  Immediately, shouts for him to drop the weapon or die echoed throughout the deck. Every single guard in the space was focused on Shane.

  “Setting it down nice and slow,” Shane said as he eased the weapon to the ground. “We were only proving a point.”

  “What point were we proving?” Max whispered loudly.

  “That dipshits shouldn’t play with guns,” Shane replied with the same loud whisper. “They could get hurt.”

  “We were doing them all a service,” Max said in a normal voice.

  “Totally,” Shane replied.

  Guards swarmed the cages and began shouting at everyone to get down, to freeze, to not move or say anything. There was a lot of yelling and Shane and Max smiled through it all.

  Then Shane’s cage was opened and ten guards swarmed him, the butts of their rifles treating him the same way he’d treated their colleague. When they were done, Shane was a moaning, bleeding, barely moving mess on the floor of his cage. The last guard out kicked him so hard that his eye patch went sailing between the bars of the cage. It skidded to a stop a couple meters away, completely out of reach of any of the captives.

  “Well, that went brilliantly,” Lake said from his cage at the opposite side of the deck. “Nice one, Reynolds.”

  “Thanks,” Shane moaned and raised a thumb.

  “My brother lives!’ Max said and pumped his fists in the air. Then the fists turned to middle fingers. “Fuck all of you! Losers!”

  “Boys, fucking shut up,” Thorne said. “They still have Darren, okay? Everything you do could reflect on him. You better hope they didn’t kill him because of your stunt.”

  “Way to bring down the mood, Uncle Vinny,” Max said.

  “Bummer, man,” Shane gasped then passed out.

  ***

  “Darren Chambers,” Wire said as she sat casually in a lounge chair before a tall, wide window; a window on her side only. On the other side was a mirror. And staring into that mirror was a brutalized Darren. “This man has anger issues. You can see it in his eyes. Or eye. Hard to see anything in the one that’s swollen shut. Might lose his vision in that eye completely.”

  “He might,” Ballantine said, seated in an identical lounge chair next to Wire. Except his hands were manacled to a long chain that was secured to his similarly manacled ankles. “I am sure that if he were to get proper medical attention in time, though, the eye could be saved.”

  “I’m sure of that as well,” Wire agreed. “Too bad that isn’t happening.”

  “You’d truly blind a man simply to spite me, Wire?” Ballantine asked. “A little petty, even for you.”

  “I will blind, maim, dismember, and whatever else I feel like doing to your friends until I get the information I want, Ballantine,” Wire replied. “Their suffering ends when you cooperate.”

  “Everyone on Grendel is an adult,” Ballantine said. “Professionals trained to take the pain. They’ll endure until you kill them. Kill them all and you have no leverage over me. Then what, Wire? You start in on me again? We both know that won’t work. Even with whatever cocktails you’ve been brewing in your mad scientist lab. I do get to see the lab, yes? When we arrive on Carter Island?”

  Wire didn’t reply.

  “Come now, Wire,” Ballantine continued. “You can tell me where we’re going. Who am I going to blab to? I’m stuck here with you for the rest of the journey, anyway. Is it Carter Island? Is that where you’ve set up your secret lair?”

  “Carter Island was its old name,” Wire said after a couple of quiet seconds. “Now it is called No Man’s Island.”

  “No Man’s Island? Well, that doesn’t scream of an angry gender-biased chip on your shoulder or anything,” Ballantine said. “This whole crazy thing with you isn’t going to turn into a war of the sexes, is it? I didn’t raise you to be that kind of person.”

  “You barely raised me at all,” Wire said. “And the name comes from the fact that this island is outside every single sovereign states’ jurisdiction. There isn’t a government in the world that can lay claim to it. Not that anyone knows where it is. I made sure to have it permanently scraped from all records.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Ballantine said. “I still had records of it.”

  “On the Beowulf,” Wire said. “Which is now at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Oh, you know me and backing up files,” Ballantine said and pointed his fingers up towards the ceiling. “You ever try scrubbing clouds? Messy business.”

  “You sent the coordinates to someone? Who?” Wire asked.

  “Are we switching questions?” Ballantine smiled. “Before you wanted to know where the item was. That precious, precious item you need so desperately to make yourself whole again. Oh, my dear, dear Wire, you can never be whole. Never. That ship sailed.”

  Ballantine guffawed.

  “Ship sailed. I crack myself up.”

  Wire pressed a button and a man stepped up close to Darren then slammed his fist into Darren’s nose so hard that sprays of blood shot out in all directions. When the man moved out of the way so Ballantine could see, Darren’s head hung loosely on his neck, his chin resting against his chest as blood poured down onto his lap.

  “Answer the question,” Wire said. “Or the next hit kills him.”

  “Kill him, or any of my crew, and you will never get the answers you seek, Wire,” Ballantine said. “Make sure they stay safe, and are let go at the appropriate time, and I will tell you everything you want.”

  “They can’t ever be let go, Ballantine.”

  “Well, shoot, then we’re not going to have many productive conversations, are we?”

  “I will kill him and the others, Ballantine.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Tell me what I want to know.”

  “Tell me something good.”

  “…what?”

  “You know that soul song,” Ballantine said. “Tell Me Something Good? Great song. Or would it be considered funk? I get funk and soul mixed up sometimes.”

  “Kill him,” Wire said.

  “Do not kill him,” Ballantine said. “Do not.”

  “Then talk,” Wire insisted.

  The man that had been beating Darren stepped up to the plate once more. His hands were no longer empty fists. They each held the end of a thin cord.

  “Five seconds and Darren Chambers dies,” Wire said. “Five.”

  “Wire, you are making a mistake.”

  “Four.”

  “A very big mistake.”

  “Three.”

  “What does it matter what I say?”

  “Two.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you.” Ballantine looked at Darren and shouted, “Don’t tell me I never did you any favors, Mr. Chambers!”

  “He cannot hear you,” Wire said.

  “I know. I like to be dramatic,” Ballantine responded.

  “Answer the fucking question,” Wire snarled.

  “Which one?” Ballantine replied. “I’m not being sarcastic. Which question?”

  Wire paused. “Who have you told about the island?”

  “A bunch of folks,” Ballantine answered. “But you want specific names. Let’s see…”

  Ballantine tried to put a finger to his chin, but the manacles didn’t stretch far enough.

  “I told… Haskel.”

  “Haskel? Haskel who?” Wire asked.

  “Aubrey Haskel,” Ballantine said. “You’ll want to look her up in your database. There’s a record of her there.”

  “Who else did you tell? I want all the names. Are they going to the island? Is this why you’re being so smug? Do you think you have a backup plan in place?”

  “Think?
Oh, Wire, I do have a backup plan in place. I have several backup plans in place. You know how I am with backup plans. I have backups of my backups and then I make backups of those.”

  Wire studied him for a minute then began to laugh. Hard. By the time she was done, Darren was moaning and beginning to come to.

  “Put him back with the others,” Wire ordered. “We’re done here.”

  “Are we?” Ballantine asked. “How nice. Is it time for tea? I could really go for a cup of tea and a cookie. You do have cookies onboard, yes?”

  “No tea, no cookies,” Wire said. “We’re done because I figured you out.”

  “You did? Bravo. That’s quite the accomplishment. So, what did you figure out about me? I’m dying to hear.”

  In the other room, Darren was lifted from his chair and dragged out of sight. Ballantine didn’t even glance that way. He kept his focus on Wire the entire time.

  “You don’t have any backup plan at all,” Wire said. “You’re terrified. I have managed the unmanageable. I burned Ballantine. You didn’t tell anyone about my island. You don’t even have the item, do you?”

  “Have it? No. You have it,” Ballantine said.

  Wire paused and glared then shook her head and her spooky mirth returned.

  “Nice try,” she said. “But we’ll revisit the item later. To think, I’ve been chasing a loser all this time. Tracking a man that has been living a lie.”

  “You figured out all of that because I boasted about backup plans having backup plans?” Ballantine asked and shook his head. “I laid it on too thick, didn’t I? Darn it. I have to learn to pull back sometimes. It’s just so hard when I am who I am. Confidence begets ego which begets folly. Or something like that. I believe I’m paraphrasing. I saw it in a fortune cookie once.”

  Ballantine sighed.

  “Were you lying about no tea and cookies?”

  “No tea and cookies,” Wire said as she stood up. “Bring in the next one!”

  “The next one? Why? I answered your question,” Ballantine said. “And where are you going? You aren’t even going to watch?”

  “No, Ballantine, I’m not going to watch,” Wire said. “This is for your eyes only. I could care less.”

  Darby was dragged into the room and strapped to the single chair. Her eyes instantly locked with Ballantine’s despite the mirrored glass between them.