Rise of the White Lotus

by H L Stephens

  As I did my best to maneuver out of my opponent's reach and recover from the blow that had taken my breath away, I remembered the other syringe Dorthia had given me filled with the juice that would bring down a moderately sized elephant. It was safely in my purse in Kovalski's room and wouldn't help me unless I could reach it. Up till then, Kovalski had managed to keep me from reaching the other door that led to his personal quarters.

  The room we were sparring in was a barren wreck and offered nothing by way of weapons. The best I could do was stay out of Kovalski's reach, but I could see the fog was clearing from his eyes the longer we fought. He was growing faster and bolder in his attacks. I did not relish the look which began to linger in the center of his eyes. It was a menace that did not bode well for me. I was growing desperate. Then I remembered the shoes and the knives that lay buried within.

  Kovalski was a big guy. If I could slow him down long enough without killing him, I could get the syringe and knock him out. I looked for the shoes that were strewn on the other side of the room. Kovalski saw where I was looking and was smart enough to know I wasn't just concerned about my wardrobe accessories. Whether he knew there might be a weapon hidden in their fashionable folds didn't matter. He did everything in his power to prevent me from reaching my one chance of getting out of that place alive. I dove for the shoes and so did Kovalski with his great gorilla arms flailing to stop me.

  It was an image out of some bizarre reality TV show as Kovalski and I scrabbled for the ruined pearlescent shoes. Like some kind of weird urban gauntlet where contestants cream one another for sequins, taffeta, and lace, it was a race for survival – mine. We reached the footwear at the same time, but I kicked out my leg at the last second. I was smaller, leaner, and more limber than my brute opponent. I got the prize. He got a mouthful of toes that were recovering from a not-so-nice case of athlete's foot.

  The heels twisted in my hands, rewarding me with twin thin blades that became my salvation. Holes in the handles of the blades were perfectly spaced for my fingers to slip into, ensuring the knives couldn't be wrenched from my grasp. Every time Kovalski reached for me, he was rewarded with a slash from my new appendages. He bled like the Red Sea. Each cut slowed him down a little more. When I finally had an opening, I took it.

  I sprinted towards the hallway that led to Kovalski's room with him hot on my tail. I surprised a member of the Brotherhood along the way and slashed him across the abdomen, continuing my sprint towards the syringe. Somewhere along the way Kovalski found a gun, and bullets began whizzing by my head at an uncomfortable rate. It is incredibly hard to hit a moving target and Kovalski was a bad aim. All it takes is one lucky bullet to take down an opponent, and I had no desire to see if luck was on his side.

  I was relieved when I saw the door to Kovalski's room open, welcoming my arrival. I dove into the entrance and scanned for my purse. There wasn't time for delicacy. I ripped the lining and grabbed for the syringe. I climbed on top of a table set conveniently next to the door, hoping the anemic plant on the floor would offer cover for a surprise attack. I didn't have time to make other provisions. The plant worked. When Kovalski burst into the room, he scanned every direction but the one I was in.

  I leapt onto his back and sank the syringe into his neck. The problem was, the wonder drug Dorthia gave me wasn't so fast acting, and I found myself gripping the back of a very big, very angry, fully conscious Russian bear who began slamming me against every wall in the room. I thought he was going to break my back as he pounded away at me. I tried to choke him out, but gaining the leverage to do so became increasingly difficult. I could barely hang on, and I was desperate to save myself from a full frontal assault. If Kovalski managed to dislodge me, my days on the earth would be over in one inglorious volley of Russian fury.

  But just when my arms were beginning to weaken, and I was beginning to lose hope in what had initially felt like a glorious plan, Kovalski's knees buckled. He crashed face first to the ground and didn't move. My exhaustion prevented me from doing more than lay there on top of him, thanking God I was still alive. We were one big pile of heaving, inglorious, mushy mess. I figured it would take until Doomsday for me to regain enough strength to disengage from the sweaty, unconscious bear hug I now found myself in. Then I heard the shuffle of feet just outside the door and knew I was in serious trouble. I didn't have the strength to take action, even for self-preservation. I hoped whoever it was would think I was dead and move on. I tried to keep my breaths shallow as the footsteps drew nearer.

  "Oh dear God, it's Jane."

  I felt gentle hands turning me over. When I opened my eyes, I found myself looking into the eyes of Dorthia and Avery - both of them armed to the teeth. Jameson was scouring my body for injuries while Oz kept watch over the rest of us.

  "Oh thank heavens," I gasped. "I thought you were Bratva." They helped me sit up. "I think he's gonna leave a stain," I finished with a moan. Jameson reached to check Kovalski's pulse. "Don't worry, doc. He's still alive, though he made it hard for me to keep him that way. The girl he shot is down the hall in another room. She needs your help more than either of us do. Oh and she's DEA, too. I don't know if Marcus was able to tell you in the midst of all the chaos."

  Dorthia brushed the hair from my face. Her touch was gentle, like my mom's would be.

  "You let us worry about the details," Dorthia said. "Just point me and Oz in the right direction. We will collect the girl and bring her here."

  The look on Oz's face as he guarded the doorway let me know we were not out of the woods as far as the Brotherhood was concerned. Bratva henchmen were still out and about hunting our crew. I told my friends where to find the DEA agent, and within minutes we were all making our way back to Marcus and our escape van, dragging an unconscious Kovalski in our wake.

  The rest of the early morning was a bit of a blur. By then, the proverbial rooster was crowing, and I was exhausted. I was proud of my first day as an official undercover whatever I was. I had captured a bad guy, saved a life, and managed to get out without getting myself killed. All-in-all, it was a good day's work. I had no idea as I laid my head down to rest with the dawning of the sun that life was about to get infinitely more complicated for me.

  Consequences

  It took me a few days to recover from my first excursion into the dangerous armpit of the underworld. Although no bones were broken, I managed to bruise just about every piece of flesh from my neck down to my buttocks. Jameson gave me a full work over. I felt like one of my dad's stressed out hydraulic rigs, having all my major working parts examined to make sure nothing was broken, getting my chassis lubed with vitamin cocktail shots and being sent to "the yard" to rest. I didn't mind though. I was exhausted in a way I had never been before. I thought it would take me weeks to recover.

  Whatever it was that was in Jameson's cocktail had me feeling better at the end of day three. After that, I felt like I could once again join the land of the living and discover whether our efforts had born any fruit. I also wanted to check on the progress of the DEA agent.

  The agent's name was Tammy Wong, and from what Marcus was able to glean from his hack into the government's system, she had been sent undercover as a prostitute to try and gather intel on Kovalski and his drug operations.

  "Where the hell was her backup?" I demanded as we talked over Marcus' findings.

  "Don't get too upset at the agency," Marcus said. "Tammy had backup. The thing is, they weren't expecting Kovalski and his crew to have much in the way of tech support. Their limo was wired to block low-level frequency tracking devices, which is what our agent friend was wearing. Your dress was equipped to adjust frequency at will and exploit any weakness that might exist in a setup like theirs. So no matter what frequency they used as a countermeasure, your signal was guaranteed to get out. Tammy didn't have such an advantage. As soon as she stepped into that limo, she disappeared to her handlers."

  "Seems like poor planning on their part," I murmured.

  "They d
idn't have me," Marcus said. His face beamed with pride.

  "How is she doing anyways?" I asked, looking to Jameson.

  "Oh she'll pull through," Jameson said. "We stabilized her once we cleared the plant and kept her in a semi-comatose state until we could get her to Methodist here in Brooklyn. Once she was there and wiped clean of all trace of us, we contacted the DEA and let them know she was alive. I checked on her progress just this morning, and she is doing well. She'll be there for a while, but those bastards didn't kill her."

  "What about Kovalski?" I asked. Just uttering his name left a rusty taste in my mouth.

  Marcus and Jameson looked at each other and gave a bit of a chuckle.

  "Let's just say that he is semi-voluntarily helping me with my experiments," Jameson said.

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  "Well, after the fiasco with the tranquilizer, I realized I needed to make some adjustment in the compound to ensure its efficacy. Kovalski is acting as my trial specimen for the improved concoctions."

  "Does Kovalski know you are doing this to him?" I asked.

  It was discomfiting watching two elderly miscreants snicker like a couple of five year olds. If either of them had drinks in their mouths, they would be blowing them out their noses with their sudden bursts of uncontrolled nasally laughter.

  "Well, that is where the 'semi-voluntarily' part comes in," Marcus said with another snicker.

  The two cohorts lost it at that point and broke out into teary-eyed, roll on the floor, pee in your pants hilarity. I wasn't in the mood. My body was still too sore and my mind too disturbed to stay long with two over-the-hill pranksters.

  "Just don't kill him before we get what we need from him," I said before walking away. It caused the two of them to break out into another round of uncontrollable, raucous laughter. I quickened my steps.

  I needed someone to talk to. As my body recovered from our venture into Kovalski's lair, I found my mind and heart were a mess. Oz said I had handled myself like a seasoned pro. The thing was, I wasn't seasoned, and I wasn't a pro. I was a kid. I felt my frailties in the very marrow of my bones. Regardless of what I had been able to pull at the club and in Kovalski's lair, I felt something slipping away from me, and I didn't like the feeling. I wasn't innocent anymore.

  The taint I sensed within myself was like the permanent urine-laced, ash and rubber-filled tattoos that Kovalski wore as a testimony to his foul deeds. Just because my deeds weren't memorialized in the same way as Kovalski's didn't make them any less heinous.

  I tried talking to Oz about it, but he didn't seem to understand what I was trying to say. He thought a good sparring match would jostle the kinks out of my brain, but my body wasn't quite ready for his method of therapy.

  I went looking for Dorthia, but she was having a clandestine meeting with her secret wigmaker. I assumed she was either getting another wig made or was having the one I had worn fixed. It went through quite a lot and didn't look so great once we peeled it off my head after the op. I didn't even try the still giggling Marcus and Jameson who were still mixing chemical cocktails for our prisoner. That left Avery.

  I found him playing a game he called Five Finger Freddie. It involved balancing a blade in the air on the tip of one of his fingers, and just when it was perfectly vertical, tossing into the air an inch or two and catching it on the tip of a different finger. When perfect balance was gained with that finger, the blade would be tossed again and caught by the tip of the next finger, and so on until all four fingers and thumb had had a chance with the blade. The thumb was the hardest he always said. I suggested he start with it and then go to the others, but he called that a cheat.

  "If I do that," he said when I had suggested it, "I won't ever test my skill. Besides, that's taking the easy road. The whole point of the game is to stretch my abilities. Sometimes in life, you have to challenge yourself to do more than what you thought you could do before."

  I had never known Avery to lose at Five Finger Freddie. To lose meant dropping the blade. When I saw him at his game, I debated just turning around. Then he called out to me, and I knew I couldn't escape my burning need.

  "Hey kid," Avery said still balancing the blade from finger to finger. He tended to refer to me as 'kid' instead of Jane, much like the uncle that called you 'sport' or the aunt that called you 'hun' all the time. "What's on your mind?"

  Without even looking at me, he knew I needed to talk. Avery was perceptive that way. The fact that he managed to sense my need while playing Five Finger Freddie, a game which required deep concentration, let me know my internal struggle was communicating itself loud and clear. I just blurted it out.

  "Am I like Kovalski?" I asked.

  The sound of the blade hitting the hard, concrete floor was enough to joggle even the stoutest heart as it echoed through the open chamber. Avery just left it where it landed on the floor.

  "Where in the name of Pete is that coming from?" he asked as he grabbed my arm and dragged me to his weapons room.

  It wasn't a room per se. It was more a series of tables burdened with various weapons Avery was inspecting or dismantling, surrounded by shelves that were piled high with additional guns and artillery of every shape, size, and type imaginable. If weapons were playthings, it would be the Toy-R-Us of armament. Avery guided me over to his favorite rundown almost leather chair and took up residence on a metal one. His expression was intense.

  "Now, what made you ask that question Jane?" Avery asked.

  When Avery used my actual name instead of calling me 'kid', it was serious. It was like knowing you were in trouble when your mom threw in your middle and last name when referring to you. In those cases, death by spanking or lecture or both was soon to follow.

  "I have just been thinking," I said.

  "That can be dangerous," Avery said.

  I would have laughed at any other time, but Avery wasn't trying to be funny. He just sat there watching me. He was using the silence to goad me into talking. I had after all come to him, so I spilled my guts. It wasn't pretty. Guts never are. They are gooey, and they tend to ooze all over the place. Before I could get two words out, I was blubbering all over myself. A weapons cache isn't the best place for storing tissues, so I had to settle for a rag that smelled suspiciously like gun oil.

  "It's just, we label Kovalski the bad guy because of what he does," I began. "He beats people up. He kills people. He lies, he cheats, he has prison tattoos, he's a lousy dresser, he has bad breath, yadda, yadda, yadda. We have a list of reasons why we call him the bad guy. The thing is, ever since I left Ironco, I have killed at least one man that I know of. I have beaten countless others. I have pretended to be people I am not. I mean, in doing all of that, what makes me any different from Kovalski?"

  "First of all Jane," Avery said, "that agent you say you killed is dead because it was either him or you. You acted in self defense, and he lost that battle. It was either kill or be killed. Basic survival kiddo. Same thing with those Bratva in the alleyway, and need I remind you, you were the one who almost died from that encounter. Now as far as what has happened since then, let us take a look at those scenarios. You are learning the same skills that are taught in every major intelligence agency the world over."

  "Yeah but you guys don't technically exist," I protested.

  "It doesn't matter," Avery said. "And stop interrupting. I am trying to make a point here."

  "Sorry," I said.

  "Thank you," Avery continued. "These skills are meant to be applied in the field. Agents use whatever means necessary to gain the trust and cooperation of assets around the world. Those same agents are also sometimes required to use deadly force in defense of themselves, in defense of others, and in defense of their country. They often have to lie, cheat, and steal to complete their missions. Does that make them quote the bad guys?"

  "Well, no, but...."

  "I am not done," Avery interrupted. "You Jane have used your skills to infiltrate the Russian Brotherhood and in so do
ing helped us (the good guys) find the manufacturing facility we have been attempting to locate for some time. You also, in the process, saved the life of a DEA agent (again one of the good guys) who was very near being murdered. Now, if you want to have a moral debate with yourself over what has happened and what role you played in it, I cannot stop you. I will however just say this.

  "The world we live in has a great many bad guys who roam around unchecked and unchallenged because there aren't enough good guys with the skills to take them down. Men like Gadyuka exist because too many people stand around and allow them to do the terrible things they do. And when the people aren't standing there watching in horror or being victims, they are helping. It is up us to step in and help restore balance. You did good Jane; really good. It may not feel like rainbows and unicorns because you have a tender heart, and to be honest, it shouldn't feel great when you take a life or come near it. When you stop feeling the impact of a mission is when you need to be worried about yourself."

  "Have you ever killed anyone Avery?" I asked.

  "Yes I have," Avery said. His gaze was level and intense.

  "Does it get any easier?" I asked.

  "No it doesn't, but you do get to a place where you understand why it is necessary. Only a sociopath isn't affected by taking a life. I have six hundred and sixty two confirmed kills and countless other woundings."

  I looked at Avery aghast.

  "That is more than Simo Häyhä had in the Winter War, and he holds the world record for confirmed kills," I said.

  Avery nodded.

  "It's true," he said. "They typically don't recognize the achievements of Shadow Brigades because if they did, the government would have to acknowledge the Shadow Brigades exist. The point I was trying to make Jane was not how stunning my record was on sniper strikes. My point is that I remember every person I have killed. I remember what they were doing moments before I took them down. I remember what they were wearing. I remember who they were with and what I was thinking right before I pulled the trigger and ended their life. Killing leaves a mark on you, and if it doesn't you have no soul."