Fox In The Henhouse

by James Lawson

  “¡Fuera de aquí, carajo!" Max barked at the motorcyclist, gun raised. The motorcyclist froze for a second, then leapt off the vehicle and ran. Max mounted the motorcycle and sped off in a cloud of dust.

  The hybrid leapt from the crowd, shifting mid-air. Max evaded the hybrid’s grasp by centimetres. Not losing any momentum, the hybrid scaled a market stall and jumped to the top of a neighbouring building.

  Max gunned the motorcycle, and bolted the machine down a narrow alley, praying like hell he’d be able to outrun the hybrid. The beast was dashing from rooftop to rooftop above him, making ground.

  Soon, the beast overtook him. All it would have to do was drop down into the alley, and Max would be a goner.

  A blast of sound boomed out above, and the hybrid fell from the edge of the building. A burst of machine gun fire broke out, and a vibrating drone shook Max’s teeth.

  A black flying craft – a Hive wasp – zoomed overhead, swooping low on the hybrid.

  Max shot out of the alleyway into a wider road, speeding past houses and shops as though fleeing an explosion. In the distance behind him, a half-dozen more wasps swooped down on the hybrid, and he roared.

  But that wasn’t Max’s problem. He had made it out, and he didn’t slow up until he was past the edge of the town, into the flat and burned countryside. He pulled over on the side of the road and looked back at Illescas.

  Even from this distance, he could hear the screams and the occasional gunshot from the Hive wasps.

  Max knew the Hive wasps would have responded from an ordinary civilian panic call. No amount of internal sabotage could stop the pre-election security efforts.

  But he also knew something else. Whoever those gunmen were – those hybrids – they were working with the mole in the Barcelona office. They wanted Max dead – no doubt about it. They wanted to stop him before he got to Portugal.

  Kicking the motorcycle to life once again, he looked down the long, straight road west. It was a hell of a long way to Portugal on this pitiful motorcycle, but he had a job to do.

  He’d ride until dawn if he needed.

  4

  Duncan Morrison did not quite know what to do. A report had just come in of a hybrid shootout in Illescas. The town itself had nothing spectacular about it; indeed, there were a thousand others like it in Spain. But a hybrid and a band of humans armed to the teeth with submachine guns had decided to shoot up the place, apparently chasing some human, who had his own pistol.

  It had to have been Max Green. The damn town was on the train line to Portugal. How could this have happened? How could Alejandro have been so goddamned careless?

  Duncan waited by an old warehouse on the Manzanares River. It was the only place he felt entirely at ease meeting with Alejandro, largely because the Hive had swept it plenty of times in the past and it was now assumed that congregating there was too stupid even for a hybrid.

  He heard the crunch of gravel; a car parking just out of sight. Duncan felt the wind go out from his sails. He knew he was in the right to be furious at Alejandro for what had happened. But whether Alejandro would see it that way was another question.

  Alejandro himself didn’t cut a particularly imposing figure. He was slightly overweight and wore a cheap suit that was too tight in some places and too loose in others. His eyes were made to look larger by thick Coke-bottle glasses, and his face was covered in a perpetual five-o’clock shadow.

  On either side of him were his two goons; men Duncan had seen almost a dozen times, but who also refused to answer any questions put to them, or acknowledge Duncan’s presence.

  Alejandro extended his hand. “Duncan, my apologies for what has happened.” He looked down at Duncan’s broken arm and smiled. “And apologies again for the arm. You know how emotional I can get.”

  “Don’t start with me,” Duncan said, instinctively moving his broken arm behind his back. “I’m trying to do something very delicate here, and your great idea is to storm in with a couple of hybrids and shoot up a town? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  If Alejandro was intimidated, he didn’t show it. He merely raised an eyebrow slightly, as though amused at Duncan’s outrage. “Let me repeat myself. I am sorry for what happened.”

  “Please, Alejandro,” Duncan said, aware of how his anger was getting the best of him. “Tell me how you managed to make this happen.”

  Alejandro sighed. “This was not my doing. There was a faction of our operation that was unsettled. They believed your agent had escaped detection. By attacking him, they thought they could place evidence upon him to implicate him as the mole.”

  Duncan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Do you have any idea of how close this has brought us to disaster? And for what? Firstly, the agent did not escape detection. Secondly, uploading a couple hundred rounds of ammunition in an otherwise sleepy town does nothing but convince the authorities to tighten security closer to the election. Get it?”

  “Duncan, you’re clearly upset, I–”

  “Do you realise how close we are to the election? It’s less than a goddamn week away. We were this close. This close!”

  “Yes, yes,” Alejandro muttered. “This brilliant strategy you kept going on about. Such a brilliant strategy that, as yet one week out from the election, it is still going ahead.”

  Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you? An outbreak of anarchy will only bring a swift show of force from the Hive. The Crown wants the elections to go forward. They need them to go forward. If you start terrorising citizens and shooting up the place, that will only further the resolve of their need for a stable government. The only way to disable the elections is to disable the faith of the public in the elections.”

  “Tell me, Duncan,” Alejandro said, smiling. “Why should I place my trust in you? It was you who brought us this plan about stalling the election, yes?”

  “Yes, dammit!” Duncan suddenly felt like a child desperate to be taken seriously.

  Alejandro nodded thoughtfully. “And now the very fact that it is in jeopardy is because the Hive knows there is a leak in the Barcelona office.”

  “And I’m taking care of that, can’t you see? This isn’t even my fault. If your men hadn’t been so bloody careless–”

  “The thing that concerns me, Duncan, is that you have found yourself with cold feet. That you now believe the only way you can back out of this entanglement is to tip the Hive off to the fact that there is a mole in your operation.”

  Duncan was lost for words. “Alejandro,” he said, suddenly hearing how desperate he sounded. “Don’t talk crazy. It’s not my fault the Crown knows there’s a leak. They picked up the wire from the coast. That’s not my fault.”

  Alejandro tilted his head to the side. “I suppose it’s mine?”

  Yes. But he didn’t dare say it. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, okay? All that matters is that we contain the threat and convince the Crown the election is safe to proceed with as is. And it could be worse. All the Hive knows is that there is going to be a meeting. They don’t know the exact details of where the meeting will be.”

  “And this innocent man you have dropped into the mix. This agent you believe you can twist and manipulate, this man you–”

  Duncan held up a hand, interrupting Alejandro. He didn’t care about the slight. “The plan will work. Max Green will make a beeline for Alfama, straight into the trap. And my agent will catch him in it.”

  “And once this agent finds Max Green stuck in your trap, our plan will continue without a hitch?”

  The question seemed to test Duncan, as though Alejandro was asking if he thought pigs would fly.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. All I know is the Crown knows there is a mole in the Hive, and if we want to derail the election, we need to implicate someone as that mole to take the suspicion off us. Once we’ve done that, I’ll go down to Lisbon on official business and meet with the Sailor.”

  Alejandro took a st
ep forward and surveyed the Hive Captain’s face closely. “You know the reason my men attacked Max Green? Because they do not trust you can pull this off. They knew it reckless to try to kill and frame him. But they did it anyway. They are desperate to cover this up.” He paused for a moment. “But I trust you. More than they do, anyway.”

  Alejandro and his two henchmen turned and began to walk away.

  “Don’t let us down,” he called over his shoulder. “Just because we are in Spain doesn’t mean our influence cannot be felt elsewhere. Remember there are other people close to you, and they all have arms that can be broken.”

  5

  Max sped through the countryside on the motorcycle, long after the sun had set. He had been travelling for hours, barely blinking, only stopping for an anxious few minutes to refuel in the smallest towns he could find. The adrenaline had run through his body at speed, almost fizzing out of his pores. The motorcycle shot across the toasted Spanish countryside, rattling his body, and he couldn’t push from his mind how exposed he was in the landscape.

  They had found him in Illescas; there was no reason they wouldn’t find him in the countryside. It wasn’t just the assassins that set Max’s nerves on edge. After the shootout in Illescas, it wouldn’t be out of the question for the Hive to be patrolling the border. A wasp could swoop in on him at any moment and bag him up – and the Sailor would get away.

  Near the Portuguese border, the motorcycle spluttered forward in random jerks, coughing out black smoke. With a last shudder, the machine died, and Max let it fall on the side of the road. His legs were weak from the travel, and he struggled to walk at a normal pace. But in the distance, due west, he could see a smattering of lights; a small town. He retrieved a map he had bought in a small town along the way and illuminated it with a match. He guessed it was Campo Maior, a Portuguese town about 5 miles from the Spanish border. With the motorcycle as good as dead, he would have to make it by foot.

  Max looked along the border from either side, and then over his shoulder. He hadn’t spotted anyone following him since he got out of Illescas, but he was still worried.

  The landscape was flat, and his body ached from the hours of riding the motorcycle. The sky was bare of clouds, and there was only a slight breeze, but Max was cold; without the sun burning above, the temperature had dropped like a stone. The further he walked, the more the cold seeped in under his skin. He scaled small fences, each time slipping to the ground. But he kept going.

  With time, the lights of Campo Maior slowly dimmed out as residents went to bed. Max got an urge to do exactly the same. He wished he could instantly transport himself to his apartment in Madrid.

  A slight noise in the distance behind him snapped through the air like a gunshot. Max spun around as fast as his ragged body could manage. The noise hadn’t been loud – no louder than someone clicking their fingers – but to Max it could mean the worst. Even a twig breaking was significant, if it meant someone was following him.

  “Who’s there?” Max called out into the dark, his voice gravely from dehydration. He pulled his pistol and raised it, although he could not see more than ten metres in front of him. “Show yourself!”

  There was total silence, save for the soft wind rustling the scrub at his feet. Then, another rustle in the dark. Max instinctively snapped back the hammer on the pistol and gripped it with two hands, ready to unleash the entire magazine on whatever or whoever was making the noise.

  A rabbit hopped into view, and Max let out a deep breath, lowing the gun. The rabbit looked at him for a moment, then decided its time was better spent elsewhere, and hopped back into the dark.

  “Shit,” Max muttered to himself, wiping a layer of sweat from his forehead. The pistol felt like a prop; heavy and ridiculous. He looked back to Campo Maior; it seemed like it was still a thousand miles away.

  He was about to start walking again, when his gut seized. There, out in the darkness, an unmistakable glint of moonlight. It reflected for the briefest moment before disappearing. It was unmistakable – the reflection of moonlight on glass. A lens.

  Before Max could get a word out, he raised the pistol, cocked, and a gunshot blasted out, the muzzle flash searing Max’s eyes.

  Something in the distance scrambled, running away. “Stop!” Max called, running after it as fast as his leaden legs could carry him. He held the pistol out in front of him, but he didn’t have the strength to keep it fixed on any point. Over his own heavy breathing, the scrambling sound retreated, gaining ground and sinking further into the darkness.

  Max stopped, bent over at the knee, breathing hard, as the noise disappeared entirely.

  Someone was following him. The words sunk in. But after the carnage earlier in the day, had his pursuers suddenly grown the patience to follow him at a distance?

  Another sound interrupted his thoughts, a low rumbling fast approaching him. Fear gripped Max. Was it a Hive wasp? He had been breathing so hard that he hadn’t noticed until it was almost on top of him.

  Suddenly spotlights blazed out, covering him with light. But they weren’t shooting down from the sky; they were coming from the ground. Two motorcycles appeared, and their riders were screaming out at Max in angry Portuguese.

  The sound of rifles being racked cracked through the air. Max dropped his pistol and threw up his hands. The lights seared out his vision, and he expected at any moment for bullets to punch into his chest.

  But no gunshots came; just the frantic cries of the riders. Max tried to tune his ear to Portuguese. Were they telling him to get down?

  “Shit!” Max said, and fell to his knees, catching the glint of a silver badge in the spotlight. They were the Portuguese police.

  A million things flew through Max’s mind, but before he could say a word, a shining silver dart flew out from behind one of the spotlights and stuck into his chest. Max’s muscles weakened. He fell backwards, but the thud of his back on the ground was nothing more than a gentle bump.

  A figure, rifle slung over his shoulder, stood above Max, silhouetted against the starry sky.

  Max slipped into darkness before he could make out what the figure was saying.

  6

  Max floated through the darkness. Whether it was for a second, an hour, or a month, he didn’t know.

  An electrical wallop surged through every inch of his body, and he was awake, gasping for breath on the floor of a jail cell.

  A cop stood above him holding a sparking plasma charger. He grinned down at Max, then stepped aside and said something to a superior who came into view.

  “Good morning,” the superior said in accented English. “Apologies for the treatment. But sometimes these things are necessary.” He turned to his subordinate. “Help him up.”

  The cop dropped the plasma charger, lifted Max up from under his shoulders and dumped him down on a cot against the wall. Max coughed at the impact, groping around for the edge to push himself up. Sunlight peeked through the barred windows. How long had he been out for?

  “Nigel Gunston,” said the superior, holding up Max’s passport. Max wondered if they had his bag, too. “Sneaking over the border at night is a most curious act for an apparently law-abiding citizen. Most curious.”

  “I think I need to explain a few things,” Max said, struggling to get the words out from his dry mouth. “Water?”

  The superior nodded at his deputy, who gave Max a dirty look and left the room.

  “I’m sure you can,” the cop said, sliding the passport into his pocket. “Perhaps you’d like to start with how your fingerprints ended up on a motorcycle discovered just over the Spanish side of the border. It was registered to an unhappy citizen in Illescas. The same location as one of the first hybrid sightings in years. And a rather violent one at that.”

  Max coughed. The deputy returned with a glass of water and picked up the plasma charger again. Max took it and downed it in one, savouring the cool feeling flowing through him. “How do you know I didn’t take my own motorcycle and f
lee Illescas in fear?”

  “Because the motorcycle is registered to a woman named Maria, and you’re much too ugly,” the senior cop said.

  “My mother said it’s what on the inside that counts,” Max said. The deputy fired the plasma charger, and Max jumped in his seat. The cops laughed.

  “Listen, friend,” the senior cop said. “You can either tell us what you were doing out there in the middle of the night, or we can hand you over to the Hive. I’m sure they’d love to take a closer look at your identification. It’s your choice.”

  Max locked eyes with the cop. There was no way in hell he would be telling this rent-a-cop what he was up to. But getting handed over to the Hive was just a little short of a death sentence. If Max was revealed to be in Portugal, there was no doubt he’d be in the mole’s crosshairs. Duncan had said as much.

  “Well, Mr Gunston? What’s it to be?”

  “I’d like to propose a third course of action,” Max said. “Outside of me telling you anything or me being delivered to the Hive.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “You could let me go.”

  The cop didn’t smile. He stood up straight and looked down his nose at Max with contempt. Then he turned and began to leave the cell. “I hope you don’t have anywhere to be. I’ll give you half an hour to come to your senses, and then I’m calling in the Ministry of Detection. I’m sure you’ve heard how good they are at extracting information.”

  The cop slammed the cell door.

  Max’s brain went into overdrive. There was only one option: he needed to get the hell out of this jail before the Hive was called in.

  But how? For a moment, he considered submitting himself to an interrogation with the cop, trying to talk his way out. But there was no way he’d be able to pull it off. The cop may have been stuck out in the middle of nowhere, but if Max made the assumption he’d be able to outsmart him, then Max would likely end up in a worse position than he was now. Besides, even if Max spun a flawless tale, explaining why he was discovered in the dead of night with a pistol and his prints on a stolen motorcycle, the cop would likely hand him over to the Hive anyway. The cop would just be using the interrogation as a chance to prove himself to his own superiors.