Metal Angel: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 3)

by A. L. Knorr

  “I could believe Marks knows what she is doing.” I shrugged, feeling a fresh weight settle over me. “But what makes her competent also makes her ruthless. We know how it went the last time we had an ally like that.”

  The surgeon had also told me that it was possible Jackie could wake up, her body healing enough to handle its own functions while her brain recovered from so much time with so little blood. It could happen, but she’d also told me that the likelihood that she would never wake up was far greater. The longer Jackie stayed like this, the less likely her recovery would be, and, eventually, a body without a functioning brain fails. She mentioned organ failure and necrosis, such precise, sterile words for an ugly reality. Despite my hopes and beliefs, my friend could be gone even now. Leaving me clutching at a shell.

  “Still, I think we can get more done with their help.” I leaned forward to rest my head on my outstretched arm. “I just don’t like the idea of following orders. We made it this far trusting our instincts...”

  My voice trailed off as I looked up at Jackie. My vision blurred as tears sprang up and ran hot, familiar trails down my face. I choked off a sob.

  The ventilator maintained its reptilian sounds while the avian chorus of monitoring machines played on.

  “Maybe, you’re right.” I sniffed, lifting a cold finger to press against my brow. “Maybe, I need to face facts. My leadership hasn’t amounted to much. Perhaps, I should give someone else’s a try.”

  ---

  “Are you sure about this, Ibby?”

  Uncle Iry sat in The Nakesh Corporation courtyard, in his wheelchair.

  “A’am, if I was sure, I wouldn’t be here asking you.” I sank face down onto the little cafe table between us. I probably looked like a petulant child but I was past caring. I could still taste salty tears at the corners of my mouth.

  “I can see reasons to take what she is offering,” I muttered at the table. “But I can also see reasons why we shouldn’t sign with a shady company that claims all its covert operations are to fight a rival secret society.”

  I felt a large, calloused grip settle over my hand and looked up at Uncle Iry.

  “Ibby, I am not sure there is a right answer.” He gave my hand a small squeeze. “We are so far from what either of us has ever known. I could tell you to do one thing or another, but it would be little more than a guess, not advice or wisdom.”

  I squeezed his hand back and propped myself up on my other elbow.

  “At this point, I’ll take guesses as well as I’d take advice. Though, only one per customer.”

  A smile crept across his weathered features, the lines in his face deeper and more numerous than ever.

  “Well then.” He gave a small groan as he sank back, releasing my hand. “I better make it a good one.”

  I crossed my arms, leaning on both elbows, feeling a little younger, a little lighter as I waited for the advice of my elder. He claimed only to guess, but Uncle Iry was the voice of wisdom in my life. His patience, his perpetual refusal to surrender to the bitter difficulties he had endured, his gentle way of speaking truth, all bound into one beautiful soul. The guesses of Irshad Bashir were worth more than a legion of wise men.

  “What should I do, a’am?”

  Uncle Iry glanced around, the little courtyard ringed in brilliant flora on stake trellises that nearly butted up against the glass windows of the complex. He looked up, squinting as the sun glittered off the dozens of floors worth of windows as they stretched into the sky. Finally, he looked down at the wheelchair where one leg rested on a pedal while the other stretched in front, encased in a cast from calf to mid-thigh. The cast stabilised the femoral break he’d suffered when Sark betrayed us and Daria destroyed spectral Museum Station. The doctors, furnished by TNC, had been optimistic about his recovery with nearly full functionality, which was fantastic given the severity of the break. In the overwhelming first few days at TNC it had been welcome news as Jackie’s situation had been so touch and go.

  “All of this is concerning,” Iry finally said, waving a hand to the courtyard and the massive office space around us. “It is all an illusion, a mask hiding a group of people who live very differently from those who walk by this building.”

  I opened my mouth to point out they couldn’t hang a sign on the front door saying WE FIGHT BAD GUYS, but my Uncle’s raised hand stopped me. I’d asked him, so I should let him have his say.

  “I understand.” He nodded slowly. “They have good reason to keep secrets, but men who are good at keeping secrets are also good at making more secrets. They breed them, as a shepherd breeds sheep, so I can’t help wondering what other secrets they have. There could be atrocities hidden behind those shiny windows, and we would never know.”

  I could see his point. With the painful exception of Sark, everyone else in our little band of fighters against Winterthür had been people we knew and trusted. Jackie was my best friend, Lowe a mentor bound by blood and destiny, and Uncle Iry was the only living family I had left. Even Marcus, the latecomer, had been co-worker and friend, who’d gone above and beyond to save me. TNC had none of that going for them, and even in the few weeks since they rescued us, it had been clear there was much going on.

  “We can’t trust them.” I felt a decision solidify in my mental grip. “So, how can we put our lives in their hands?”

  Iry gave me a side-long glance. “Hold on now.” He wagged a finger. “I wasn’t finished.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “A’am, please! Put me out of my misery.”

  “Impatient child,” he grumbled with hollow derision, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “Listen longer and speak less, especially when you ask for advice.”

  I rolled my eyes and then shot him a sly look. “I thought this was just a guess?”

  “Don’t change the subject.” He made a show of adjusting the wheelchair’s seat. Once he was done, he reached down and tapped a finger on the plaster on his leg.

  “This is what gives me pause.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the doors which led out of the courtyard, to the elevator down to the medical levels. “Also, the care they are taking with Jackie. Both suggest that these secretive people might be diamonds in the rough.”

  I didn’t rise from my slouched position, but I watched my uncle intently, snatching up every word like spilled treasure.

  “We have had to trust them for many days now. What do we have to show for it?”

  A small, ugly voice inside me wanted to make a snide remark about Jackie’s condition, but I snuffed it out on principle. I couldn’t lay the blame for my friend’s injuries at the feet of TNC. It was Daria who’d been responsible for that. My molars ground together at the thought.

  “If this woman--Ms Marks—is as nefarious and ruthless as we imagine she could be, why would she go to all the trouble of tending to us? We could have died under substandard care. In truth, she could have had us killed, and it would be unlikely you would have thought it was anything except our injuries, Jackie especially.”

  The thought made me shiver and wrap my arms around myself. Two of the closest people I had, gone in one fell swoop … my heart lurched in my chest, grateful things had not turned out that way.

  “Free of people to care for and looking for revenge, she could have used your rage and grief to turn you into a weapon. Blinded by loss, Marks could have set you after every enemy she had, and you would have destroyed them without a second thought. You have your father’s eyes, but your mother’s fire, and that fire fed by a broken heart could burn down the world.”

  Again, I knew what he was saying was true, but the thought of it unsettled me. I remembered the rage I’d felt when Sark had first taken Jackie and then my fury when facing Pierre. I’d never thought of myself as an angry person, and maybe I wasn’t, but there did seem a deep reserve of wrath somewhere inside of me. If I had lost my uncle and my best friend, what kind of person would I have become?

  “But she didn’t do that.” I shook o
ff the layers of dread and refocused on the facts. “So she’s one of the good guys?”

  Iry shrugged, and the lines in his face deepened again as a pensive frown settled over his features.

  “Maybe,” he sighed. “Whatever her intentions, it’s clear she values you. She is a strategist or she wouldn’t be in the position of power TNC has put her in. She knows helping us puts you in her debt, but she wants that debt to be honoured by someone powerful, someone she can leverage. In time we may find out if she’s worth trusting, but presently, she is playing a long game, and that is good for us.”

  I took a minute to digest this, doing my best to set aside how guilty I felt every time I looked at his leg. Guilt wouldn’t mend his leg, but the right choice now could ensure such injuries--or worse--didn’t happen in the future.

  “So you think I should sign up with Marks? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  The words had the weight of finality as they fell from my lips.

  “I cannot make that decision for you, Ibby. But if I were you, I would consider following these bread crumbs to see where they may lead. We have found a powerful ally—until we see evidence that they are otherwise--and in these times we can use all the help we can get.” Iry stifled a yawn. Dark pockets of weariness had sprouted under his eyes. “Before you go, could you help a babbling old man back to his bed?”

  I pressed the lump in my throat aside and put on the best smile I could manage.

  “Of course.”

  Four

  Signing on with a secret society was far less esoteric than I’d imagined. More like signing a lease for a flat. So many little spots to review and initial, so many places to sign and date, but once I was done I was given a key card, an account and access to the company networks, and the promise that my salary deposit would be made post-haste.

  That final thought put a bounce in my step as I walked out of Marks’ office: well compensated, indeed! My sprightly mood lasted until I reached the elevator, where I was intercepted by Corporal Bordeaux, one of the security team members.

  If there was anyone who could match Stewart for the grim stare down award, it was Bordeaux, whose features looked chiselled out of granite. The only sign he was really human was a long jagged scar across his neck, where the words “par le sang versé” had been inked alongside the old wound. Flinty black eyes glared from beneath heavy brows, and my cheer shrivelled rapidly.

  “Stewart wants you for a briefing,” he informed me with a voice like raw gravel.

  Bristling, I eyed him. I’d just signed up, and I was already getting ordered around?

  “Right now,” he barked, making me jump. “Stewart wants you present for the briefing on the next operation.”

  “The terms of my contract is fresh in my mind,” I growled, narrowing my eyes throwing some sass into my hip. “I get to choose what operations I do and don’t take.”

  Bordeaux’s expression didn’t budge, but an intense, almost feverish light came into his eyes. When he spoke, there was an eager edge to his grinding voice.

  “Trust me; you want in on this one.”

  My defiance reluctantly crumbled at the gleeful undertone in his words. Curiosity raised its head. “Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he rumbled with what might have been the closest Bordeaux ever came to a laugh. “Weren’t you the one who brought the intel about Iraq?”

  ---

  “It’s goin’ to be a hard noot to crack,” Stewart remarked as the lights came up in the briefing room. The projection of the complex’s estimated layout alongside topographic maps of the area were still superimposed on the wall next to him.

  “Lucky for us, we’ll be bringin’ a few nootcrackers.”

  I thought for a second that he was talking about me, and was uncertain whether I should be proud or outraged at being called a “nootcracker”. But when the security team smiled and pounded their fists together before releasing them in pantomime explosions, I realised they were talking about explosives. Before I could help it, disappointment seeped around my edges. They were excited about getting to blow things up, not about me.

  “Your outfitting papers will arrive shortly,” Stewart continued, pretending he didn’t notice the excited muttering around him. “We’re wheels up at 0400, and live by 0800, so get your outfits sorted in the next few hours and then tuck in early. Dismissed.”

  There were murmurs of acknowledgement as the soldiers climbed to their feet, some talking as they left while others bolted, determined to use their last few hours well before lights out.

  I got up and moved toward the front of the room, where Stewart was packing up the laptop he’d run the presentation from.

  “Sergeant?” I stopped on the other side of his desk. “Could I speak to you?”

  He gave me an affirmative grunt as he clicked the black briefcase shut, his expression no more disapproving than it usually was.

  The room had emptied quickly, but I had to shift aside sheepishly as the last gaggle of soldiers skirted by the front of the room to the exit.

  “Bordeaux said you wanted me to be here for the briefing,” I began, fighting the urge to fiddle and shift back and forth like a kid asking for a cookie. “So I assumed that you wanted me to be part of the operation, but I wasn’t mentioned, except that Hadlynne was supposed to keep an eye on me.”

  Stewart let out a heavy, sonorous breath.

  “You object to Hadlynne, then?” He stood the briefcase up on the table, gnarled hands gripping either side.

  “No, Hadlynne is fine,” I said with a dismissive wave.

  “Then I s’pose I dinna ken what the issue is.”

  I took in a steadying breath, determined to keep my voice level.

  “The issue is that I am on the team now; you wanted me in the briefing, but I haven’t been told what my role is in this operation. I need clarity. Direction.”

  Stewart gave me a hard look. It took willpower not to squirm. Finally, the old Scot nodded and then laid his briefcase down on the table again.

  “I understand what you’re asking, Ms Bashir,” he said, raising a hand to knead at his brow as though nursing a headache. “You’re eager and powerful, but you’re not a soldier. This operation is strictly soldierin’ in its initial phases. You are coming along as a courtesy to Ms Marks and for experience. If you want a title, call yourself an observer, but otherwise your job is to stay out of the way.”

  “What about Fes?” I asked. “I opened the door and followed orders. How is this any different?”

  Stewart shook his head, clucking his tongue. The dismissive gesture made my teeth grind together in irritation.

  “With Fes we had good intel that most were either dead or gone.” The old soldier slowed his words and softened his tone, like he was talking to a child. “This is a fortified enemy position with evidence of active hostiles. I let you show-off in Fes because Ms Marks instructed that it should be so, but now that you’re part of the command structure, my only instruction is to include you. Be thankful I’m willing to do that.”

  A tremble of anger ran through me, and I had a petulant desire to show him the kind of power I could bring to bear. Metallic aura in the room sang in the background, offering themselves as instruments of a dramatic demonstration, one that would wipe that condescending look off Stewart’s face.

  “Don’t you understand that I am wasted as an observer, Sergeant?” I bit the words out through a clenched jaw and made air quotes around the word ‘observer’, trying not to sneer the word. “Not every problem can be solved by a military solution.”

  “With all due respect, Ms Bashir, that’s where we disagree. It’s why I do what I do. Every problem does have a military solution, it’s only a matter of scale.” He gave me a close-mouthed smile that made me want to scream. Instead, I took a slow breath and counted to ten.

  I wanted to throw my past victories in his face. One look in his eyes told me that he wouldn’t be impressed, and given who he worked for, maybe he had a right not to be. Res
pect had to be earned, and throwing a tantrum wasn’t going to do that. Maybe I needed to check my pride and let him run his team the way he saw fit. My chance to be show him I should not be so easily dismissed would come, I had no doubt of that. Patience, Ibby.

  “Alright.” I exhaled. “It is your squad, you know best.”

  Stewart nodded, sweeping up his briefcase.

  “Glad to hear it.” He made toward the door.

  I stood at the table and watched him go.

  “Ah!” Stewart turned at the door, his expression that of a man remembering something unpleasant.

  “That great brute you came in with, he’s been pestering me and some o’ the lads about comin’ on operations. Almost as irritatingly eager as you.”

  An odd combination of defensiveness and embarrassment rose in my heart at his mention of Marcus. I gaped for half a moment, struggling to know what to say that wasn’t a betrayal of my boyfriend and wouldn’t rouse more of Stewart’s ire.

  “He just wants to help,” I offered with a shrug. “Same as me.”

  Stewart snorted, and then turned to leave again.

  “Tell him to bother someone else about helping,” he called over his shoulder. “Before one of my lads puts him in a bed next to your uncle.”

  ---

  “He said what?!”

  I hadn’t been sure that telling Marcus exactly what Stewart had said was a good idea. Turned out it was a terrible idea.

  The large muscles that sloped up from his shoulders to his neck bunched into trembling knots as he ground his teeth loud enough for me to hear. The bruises from the beating at Pierre’s manor had faded from sight, but as his skin flushed, there were blotchy shadows left in their memory.

  “Stuck up bastards,” he rumbled as he began to pace across the small common room that sat between the suite of rooms we’d been given. His hands clenched into meaty fists.

  “I hope one of ’em does have a go at me. We’ll see what gets broken!”