by Skyler Grant
"Brambles," I said and thorned vines sprang up around the Sheriff even as I rushed towards him to ruin his aim. He didn't hesitate, the shot took me right between the eyes.
Unlike my past deaths I felt myself grow disembodied. I was floating within a jail cell where a small box of flowers had been carefully set up. I guess I really had picked the right set of powers. I focused on the next set that could be found. It looked to be a brothel—the girls did like their flowers. It would do. I reincarnated.
I hoped I'd spoiled the Sheriff's aim enough to give Columbia a fighting chance. Whether I had or not, I had a mission to carry out. Getting inside that bank vault.
108
The whole city wasn't against me at least. Despite how much I stood out, I wasn't stopped as I moved through the streets. It wasn't far to the bank.
I waved my hand in an alleyway and created a field of flowers. I had a point where I could come back closer now. It didn't do a thing against all those guards I saw. I could try my war of attrition thing again, but I was worried about its effectiveness. It had worked before because I was facing a limited number of forces not openly against me.
This wasn't the same thing at all. I expected, if I started in on that bank, I'd find the entire town turned against me. Columbia, if she was even still alive, was surely fighting for her life.
"You with me, Ismene?" I thought
"I'm here and my safecracking fingers are itching and ready,"
"We really need an actual body for you."
"One day maybe when I'm not having to hide that I even exist," Ismene said.
I eyed the bank and counted numbers. Four suspiciously placed men outside with rifles. Another two inside. Then there were two tellers behind a desk and beyond them the heavy door of a vault.
I didn't have to die. I could pull this off without it. I ran for it.
A charging, mostly-naked woman drew more than a few eyes. The first guard started to raise a rifle and I gestured. Brambles sprang up around him encasing him in thorns. I went from being a possible threat to a real threat.
A second guard got off a shot as I dove through the doorway and landed in a crouch. A wall of thorned vines sprang up behind me. One of the guards inside got off a shot. I grabbed one of the bank customers and threw him. That strength was coming in handy. With my lack of skills it wasn't particularly well done, but customer and guard both went down in a tangle of limbs. A second later they were encased in a thick mesh of brambles.
I was making them a lot faster and more plentiful than before. It must be the levels I'd gained. The other interior guard took a shot which I just avoided. I didn't even try to incapacitate him, I just rushed past the astonished tellers. "Bamboo," I whispered under my breath and a wall of it erupted from the floor to form a barrier.
It wasn't much, but it would do for the moment. The vault had on it a series of three dials. It must take three different combinations. I imagined each bank employee probably knew one, this was heavy-duty security so far as it went. I hoped Ismene would be able to crack it. I dropped to a knee and pressed my ear to the vault to turn the dials. It was show, theater for the watchers. They didn't know about Ismene and I needed to be pretending to do something while she did her work.
I heard shots from outside. I paused and focused, and murmured bamboo repeatedly. Outside, if all was going to plan, stalks were appearing all over the bank lobby. I was filling the place with wooden barriers.
"They're good," Ismene said.
"So are you," I thought back.
"Differential calculus was never my thing. Okay, try this," Ismene said and read off numbers for each of the three dials.
I tried them and tested the lever to open the vault. Nothing.
"Ismene..." I thought
"They really don't want unauthorized people getting in here. They built this thing for a reason. Okay, new sequence." I tried the new one and still got nothing.
The clock was ticking and nothing was getting done.
"I need muscular control," Ismene said.
"I don't actually have muscles right now," I thought back.
"Then this will be easy. The sequences are changing by the second for each number," Ismene said.
"Then how does anybody ever open the damned thing?"
"They probably have authenticators built into their meat brains that translate here." I felt my body suddenly get very strange as I lost control of it.
It was a bit like being possessed.
"I can stop caressing myself anytime now," I thought.
"Yeah. I was curious and you owed me for this."
I felt my fingers spinning the dials. This time I heard that loud satisfying clunk when the last had been turned. I felt control of my limbs come back and I opened the door.
There was gold. There was a lot of gold. It wasn't the target, of course. Beyond racks filled currency there were rows of tiny chests, all about the size of my fist, neatly locked up. Each had a six digit number written on it in calligraphy.
"The building Masque was being held was facility 2131," Ismene said.
The numbers were sequential and I was able to find one marked 002131 easily enough.
"Are all of these others similar facilities?" I asked Ismene.
"Those are probably just project numbers. Black ops."
That made sense. The temptation was there to grab a bunch of them, instead I emptied a bag of money and stuffed the one box inside. We hadn't come to rob SantaFe blind of all their secrets. We'd come to rob them blind of one particularly dirty secret.
I stepped out of the vault. There was a rush of heat, and red and orange flickering from beyond my bamboo wall. They'd set fire to the bank. That seemed extreme, but then if they knew I'd gotten inside they knew their corporate secrets were being raided.
I hadn't tried my powers for anything like this, but now seemed the time. "Oak," I said, focusing upon a nearby section of brick wall. There was a rumble and the ground lurched beneath my fault as a tree sprang out of the ground sending bricks crumbling and the wall scattering.
I squeezed through with my stolen plunder and was instantly under fire. A youth in a white hat called out, "She's over here!" before taking another shot. He exploded a moment later. Literally exploded, a mass of limbs and gore.
It was Columbia, leaning over a horse as she rode into view with pistols in hand. "Hop on," she said.
"I'm pretty sure I can run faster than your horse," I said.
Columbia grinned, "Let's find out."
The horse was kicked into a gallop and I followed. I trusted that she'd have some sort of escape plan and she did.
The train terminal was at the edge of town. The engine was already steaming when we arrived, although I saw nobody tending it. Columbia stumbled off her horse and it was only then I saw the bloodstain causing her shirt to cling to her. The woman didn't let it stop her.
"You're shot," I said.
"Should see Pat," Columbia said, as she marched towards the engine compartment. I joined her and in short order the train was in motion and beginning to pull ahead.
"Am I going to be seeing Pat?" I asked, looking out. I didn't see any signs of pursuit, but I imagined it had to be on the way.
"Not for days and if we're still in here for that long we've got bigger problems. Fuck. I didn't expect him," Columbia said, slumping down. A prompt appeared flashing before me.
Condition Change: SantaFe has escalated the current encounter
At least one member of Liberty must escape within the next 48 hours with the stolen data
In pursuit
Billy the Kid
Pecos Bill: John Henry
Calamity Jane
Jesse James
"Shit," Columbia said, clutching her side. "That has to be their whole roster still off-timer. They're sending the whole damned roster after us. What the hell did you get me into?"
"Is what we stole that valuable?" I asked.
"It shouldn't be. Valuable yeah, or we wouldn't have
come in after it, but calling up everyone like that? It's expensive," Columbia said, and she took a pained breath as she shifted.
"You're hurt bad," I said.
"I'll heal in a few hours. Not that easy to put down a force for freedom," Columbia said.
All the Liberty talk really got weird sometimes.
While there would be fights ahead, there wasn't one at the moment.
"Get some rest. I'll take watch," I said.
"Try to slow them down," Columbia said.
"Oh, I can grow trees now. If they're following us, it isn't going to be by train," I said.
"Badass," Columbia said, and shifted back to rest her head against the console as she fell asleep.
109
The next few hours were peaceful. I regularly kept throwing out obstacles behind us, trees to split open the track and brambles to fill the land alongside. I wasn't sure if it was helping, despite those big names in pursuit I'd seen not a bit of them. That worried me, if I didn't see them behind us it made me think that they were planning something else. That they had some other sort of tactic.
Columbia woke after a few hours. A leisurely sort of stretch and she took off her shirt to check the wound. Blood flaked readily off where she'd been shot, but the flesh beneath seemed unmarked.
"You're looking better," I said.
"Flatterer. Glad you like the view," Columbia said. It was true, she wasn't wearing a bra, it also wasn't what I'd meant. Of course, she knew that, she was playing it up for the home viewers. Or so I assumed, given she didn't seem in all that much hurry to shrug it back on, spitting on the fabric and working to scrub the fresh clean.
"I haven't seen any signs of them," I said.
Columbia frowned and lifted a shoulder. "You won't yet. They'll be planning something. They didn't call out all those guns expecting to lose. Ambush us, kill us and they keep that data. Those are the new rules of the encounter."
"I'm still iffy on how these encounters work. It seems different than wars," I said.
"It is. Wars are agreed on ahead of time with the rules firmly in place, but what we do, we can surprise them. We file with arbitration ahead of time for the rules of what we're attempting and we go in. Course, if they catch us at it and are willing to pay a premium, they can change the rules we're operating under," Columbia said.
"So what exactly did they do?" I asked.
"Pat was in town when we arrived, we were always going to face off against him. They bid in everyone and part of that is going to be giving them time to arrive and get ready. I knew I was good for a nap and some healing, because right now this train isn't going much of anywhere," Columbia said.
So right now we were effectively in a holding room waiting for our competition to get geared up and ready. That made some more sense out of things. It did mean my efforts on the tracks the past few hours had mostly been useless.
"So what do we do until the action heats up?" I asked.
"Talk? Make out? Fuck? You know I'm open to it all," Columbia said.
I preferred guys, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested. Columbia had stepped up a few times when she didn't have to. I found her crude and in some ways kind of tacky, but still, she actually was kind of larger than life .
"Talk. I know how I got into all this, how did you?" I asked.
Columbia grinned, "My life story? Seems one-sided when I know you're not going to tell me yours. At least, if you're still sticking with that bullshit original story about falling from Olympus."
That bullshit origin story happened to be truth. I didn't exactly want to say that too vigorously though, now with the cameras still going.
"So you'll pry something else out of me," I said.
"I will. I'm your usual company scion. Liberty has four stations linked together and it matters a lot where you're from. I'm Mayflower, which was the first. Fifth generation," Columbia said.
I didn't know a lot about the hierarchy in Liberty, but she made that sound important. Probably equivalent to how I grew up, near royalty in a Corporation that didn't actually have royalty.
"I think I'm supposed to be impressed," I said.
"You are. Still, birth alone doesn't get you a hero gig. That usually takes something special," Columbia said, a touch serious. There was a hint of pain there.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Sorry, it's a tough memory. I'd trained to be a soldier. I was good, but nothing amazing. Went down to the surface for my eighteenth birthday, you know, right of passage and all that. Well, maybe you wouldn't—not being an orbiter," Columbia said.
I did. I'd never gotten to do mine, but it was common for the elite. Go see the world below and learn just how lucky you had it.
"Olympus, remember," I said.
"Sure," Columbia said with a dark look. I know what she felt, that I was returning her honest talk of something painful with a lie. "Shuttle crashed. My tracker was damaged and everybody thought I'd died. Some unemployed rescued me and were actually good to me. There was this gang preying on them, they lived with some pretty horrible shit every day."
I didn't have to imagine. I'd been down on the surface for about a week now and I'd seen more horrible things than I'd have ever imagined.
"You did something?" I asked.
"I'm Liberty, born and bred. Freedom isn't free and is bought with the barrel of a gun. I believe that to the very core of my being. I taught them those lessons. We killed every last one of those sons of bitches," Columbia said.
"You could have just found a transponder. Let Liberty know you were alive, let rescue come," I said.
"Could have. I'm not a girl that runs from a fight," Columbia said.
Yeah, she played things up for the camera, but there was steel in her.
"What happened to the people? The ones who helped you?" I asked.
"They're now Abigonia. Liberated the whole damned sector and petitioned Liberty to join up. Abigail is my real name behind Columbia," Columbia said. “So Abigonia...”
"And after all of that, they made you Columbia. You said you're not the first?" I asked.
Columbia shook her head. "There were others, but neither of them lasted long. There are stories there, but we don't talk about them."
That just made me more curious. I never got a chance to ask.
Our train got sucked into a tornado. Neither of us had seen it coming or was ready. Even here my Olympian reflexes gave me some advantage though and, as we lifted from the tracks, I sprang at Columbia and willed a set of flowers into being within the train. I could die and be healed, but her body took a lot longer. It just made sense to cover her.
Columbia wasn't one to waste an opportunity. She kissed me.
It might have been nice in other circumstances. But at the moment I was just keeping her pinned down as we tumbled end over end. The contents of the car bounced and collided as the train tore itself apart. A lever broke several of my ribs, a box fractured my leg. By the time the carriage finally came tumbling to a stop I was a broken, bleeding wreck.
"Did you feel the world spin? I felt the world spin," Columbia said. She was making jokes now? Fortunately that wasn't all she was doing, a pistol coming out, and she shot me in the face.
I selected the flowers I'd just grown and came to a moment later.
The car was on its side and Columbia leapt up to punch the twisted remains of the door, which screeched and flung aside. Divine strength I could only assume. Then she was crawling out and I joined her. Desert stretched around us on all sides. A cloud of dust could be seen from a band of riders coming in our direction. It had to be the SantaFe heroes coming to finish the job.
"Fuck," Columbia said, looking around. A mountain peak in the distance caught her eye. "Washington Peak. That is a Liberty outpost and there will be a cavalry unit there. Go, you're faster than I am. Just one of us has to escape with the data and you're faster than me."
"Am I faster than a bunch of heroes’ horses?" I asked.
"Probably not," Colu
mbia said. "You got a better idea?"
I did actually.
"You run and I'll hold them off. You're the better fighter, but you aren't holding out against those numbers. I can just keep coming back and delaying them," I said.
Columbia looked torn. I understood the impulse. She didn't want to leave anyone behind, but the fact she was even considering it meant she knew my plan made sense.
"Go," I said.
Columbia grabbed the bag that contained the stolen box from the vault. "Give them hell."
Then she was off.
I didn't have much time before the riders arrived. I gestured, focused my will and transformed the desert into a vast field of flowers. They wanted to do this, they'd be doing it on my turf.
110
I watched as the riders approached and did my best to come up with a plan. A plan always helped, even though the old truism about them rarely surviving contact with the enemy had merit. I'd already set the battleground to be favorable to me, with the flowers everywhere I could die and come back at angles they didn't expect. That and my ability to create plans were what I had going for me.
So far my immortality ability seemed fairly rare, so if I could kill any of them then they'd have a death timer and be well and truly out of the fight for the time being.
The riders drew near and I whispered 'oak' beneath my breath. A line of trees erupted from the earth just before their horses. The reaction was as I'd hoped, two riders getting thrown and the others having to ride around. A shot rang out and I just barely managed to get out of the way.
"Brambles," I murmured, encasing one of the riders.
Another shot ran out. At that range and with my reflexes I never really expected a hit, but it struck my knee fracturing bone and dropping me to the ground. The pain was excruciating, I'd have to lose the wound. Another rider leveled their gun and I prepared myself to run towards, instead of away, from the bullet. To place myself in the path of harm. Another shot and my other knee exploded from the impact.
