by O. J. Lowe
Just do it. Do the job. Kill him, leave.
No! Kill them all.
He’s the only target though.
They will kill you if you don’t.
They’ll try!
Yes, they will. And you’ll have to kill them to stop them.
There must be a better way!
Not with the time you have.
Arguments raged through her head, she could feel the faintest twitches at the edge of her conscious mind, her urges begging to be twisted by the drugs, she could feel her nails scraping back and forth against her sleeve, her teeth silently chewing empty air. Her hands were shaking, it was a good thing she didn’t possess a blaster.
She didn’t need a weapon. She was a weapon.
A final long exhale and she leaped from the bushes, took off across the lawns at a run. No sign of motion detectors, which meant nothing, there always were some. Freshly disturbed patches of lawn, uneven lengths of grass where it had been torn up and put back down to hide the surprise below. She was fast, faster than any human had a right to be. One of her spirits was a gazelle, she’d clocked herself running a race with it and could easily keep pace, even if perhaps killing was a different proposition with opponents like these.
By the time they realised she was there, it’d be too late for them, she knew that. The lawn wasn’t massive, about standard size for the large detached house looming above her, all white bricks and old wood to try and make it look a little more rustic. She’d never appreciated effects like that, even when she was a spirit dancer. She was done with that part of her life, not by choice admittedly, but that was the rub of things. For Unisco agents, their reactions weren’t anything special, she was on them before they could get a shot off, thankfully. The place being on high alert following the discharge of a weapon wouldn’t make the mission harder, but neither would it make it easier. She’d prefer to avoid being shot if she could help it.
One of them got a weapon up, she took it from him, bent the barrel up into a U shape and smashed the butt of the rifle into his face, watched him go down hard under her blow, damaged but not dead. She knew exactly how much force needed to be applied to a human bone in to smash it, and how much it’d take to turn a painful blow into a fatal one. The other, she flung out a fist and saw caught him in the chest, saw him crash through the door, smashing straight through. He lay on the other side amidst the wooden remains, a pile of twisted limbs and broken lumber.
If they hadn’t known she was here before, they did now. She kicked one rifle out the way, the damaged one, picked the other up and checked it over with practiced hands. Might as well make things easier for herself now, as much of a workout as beating them to death with her bare hands might turn out to be.
She’d seen the architect plans for the house before coming here, had done her research. Fail to prepare and prepare to fail and all that. She needed to know about any possible escape routes she hadn’t considered. A simple enough point of entry, a front door and a back, one flight of stairs and the only route out up at the top being the windows. If she cut off the stairwell, it’d effectively corner the target. Between main door and stairwell, she had a single large entrance hall, doors surrounding it on all sides and a small corridor leading to its base. Already the doors around her were starting to open, Unisco agents sprinting out with blaster pistols up and aimed at her. Some of them even got close to hitting her with their shots, she ducked down, retaliated with fire of her own the moment she got the first hint of movement, her superior vision picking them out with ease in the dark.
By the time she reached the stairs, she’d drained her charge pack and didn’t give the pattern of bodies around her a second glance, so many dead in so short a space of time. She’d become a master so quickly, had been put through her paces on the shooting range, even if so much of it felt natural. When the cells ran dry, she flung it aside, picked up her pace and ran, put her shoulder out in front of her and decided she wasn’t stopping.
A quintuplet of blasters pointed at her as she tore through the door leading to the meeting room, six shocked faces staring at her, not entirely registering her presence. Only her target hadn’t drawn, he’d studied her with first curiosity and then shock on his broad face as they took her in. She wondered how she looked, a small woman covered in blood not her own and dressed in worn speeder bike leathers. If she could see herself, she’d probably have been terrified by the spectre she’d become.
They went to pull triggers on her, didn’t realise she’d be just a fraction too fast for them. By the time the blasts left the weapons, she’d already moved, flung herself onto the table and slid across the surface, kicked out and hit one of them in the throat with the toe of her boot, saw him fall away gagging. His weapon fell from his grasp, and she snatched it out the air, emptied it into the one furthest away from her, put five shots into his centre mass, two down in as many seconds. Her arm snapped out, drove an elbow into the solar plexus of another, she felt him double over, adjusted her shape to grab him by the collar of his jacket and violently yank him down into the table, face first. A shattered skull made a distinctive sound, she’d always found.
The fourth got lucky, blasted her straight in the face four times, heat and light cutting off her vision. The first time it had happened, it had terrified her, sent her pulse hammering and a liberal dose of narcotic had flooded her system to keep her calm. They’d done some tweaking after that, aware that loss of her vision made her less effective and the eyes were a weak point. Though they’d heal, it would still take a few minutes and in the heat of battle, that wasn’t the sort of time an enemy would allow her.
The second her vision was torn from her, the rest of her senses kicked in, enhanced way beyond even the norms she’d had bestowed upon her, she could hear a pin drop a hundred feet away and point out the direction. She could smell sweat and fear, almost taste it in the air as well, cloying thick and sickly on her tongue. She’d never admit it aloud, but this was almost better than sight. She could hear his pulse rate rise and he must have been terrified to see a once-beautiful woman with a ruined face still coming for him despite suffering injuries that would have dropped anyone else. In a split-second, her hands closed around a neck and she squeezed hard, driving her thumbs into the soft flesh under the jaw, locking them in so he couldn’t break her grip. Judging by the sounds escaping him as the air was crushed from him, the pain had to be excruciating. More pressure, she guessed, and his neck would break. The crack confirmed it, the unmistakeable sound of vertebrate splintering and shattering under forces they weren’t meant to absorb.
He had a knife on him, she could smell it, polish and old blood, the odour of the latter masked by the former but still there. She plunged her hand towards it, closed fingers around the hilt of the blade and she threw it behind her without looking, caught the fifth shooter with it, no hesitation, no trouble. By the burbling sounds he was making, she’d hit him in the throat, he’d be bleeding out right about now, his last moments spent in agony. She liked the throat. As targets of weakness went, it was quite a good one. Hit it hard enough and anyone, no matter how big, would go down and not get back up. Her vision was starting to come back, the rest of her senses fading with its return, the edges of the black replaced by red gradually. Soon the red faded into an array of colours and shapes, everything coming back to her.
She heard the click of the safety being removed from the blaster, turned to her target. The last man standing. She couldn’t see his face yet, but she could hear his rapid breathing, sucking in big gulps of air, smell the odour of his body.
“If you think it’ll make any difference,” she said. “Then go ahead. I didn’t want to kill everyone else, but they didn’t give me much of a choice.”
“I know you,” he said. He didn’t sound puzzled or afraid, more just resigned. “I saw you in my sister’s lab. You were asleep in a tube. She told me who you were and what she’d done to you. What Harvey Rocastle did to you.”
She blinked. She could alm
ost see his face now. She didn’t normally talk to the target, it made it harder to drop them if you had a nice little chit-chat with them. It made them more human, too easy to empathise with and she didn’t want that. Just because the drugs took the edge off didn’t mean that the rest of the feelings couldn’t cut her given the chance
“You know it’s not too late,” he said gently. “The kingdoms are looking for you. You’re only useful while you’re my sister’s secret assassin. You get pictured, everyone knows you’re alive and what she did to you. It’s been a year; your name is old news now but that changes so quickly in these kingdoms.”
Even at the point when his death was about to come, Collison Coppinger was trying to talk his way out of it. She could see him, could see he still pointed his weapon at her, although the inclination for him to use it wasn’t in his eyes.
“I know it’s not going to kill you if I shoot you. That’s not why I don’t want to,” he said. “You know you’re just as much a victim as anyone you murder in my sister’s name. I’m amazed you can remember your own, Ms Stanton.”
“Stanton?” She said it to herself, tried the name out in her mouth, realised how natural it felt to her as she spoke.
“That’s your name,” he said. “You don’t remember, do you? Selena Stanton. Spirit dancer. One of the best. Damn good one. Former friend and mentor to Harvey Rocastle. You were the price he paid to stand alongside my sister. They needed a subject to do this to. I guess you were unlucky. I guess we were both unlucky, huh? Can’t help it sometimes.”
She said nothing. Selena Stanton? Had that been her? Every so often when in the field, she’d see the name crop up in the news, see the pictures. The resemblance ended past the face. Stanton was healthier, happier, not broken like her. Her hair had been the colour of copper flames, hers was the colour of oil-soaked soot.
“She’s pulling your strings,” he said. “I know that. My sister does that. She grabs control of whomever she can, makes them dance to her tune. You can’t fight her. She made sure of that, I’ll wager.” He sighed, took a step closer to her. He was in reaching grip now, she could crush him if she wanted. Take his blaster from him and fire it into his face. He wouldn’t survive it.
“You don’t want to do it, do you?” he said, almost an accusation. “I can tell it in your eyes. You just want this to be over. We all want it to be over. How does my sister make you dance? What hold does she have over you?” His voice was soft now, smooth and hypnotic, that weird blend of Premesoir deep-south and almost aristocratic Canterage drawl. “Work with me here and I can help you.”
Unconsciously, she thrust out her chest… Stanton had had a magnificent chest… pushing her breasts to straining point against the leather, hoping that it’d emphasise the curve of the control disc there. Maybe, just maybe if he shot it… She couldn’t tell him about it, her mouth wouldn’t let the words form, but the subtlest of gestures might save her life.
His eyes went there, she saw the recognition, saw the way his arms tensed, the muscles in his fingers going to pull the trigger, his aim adjusting…
Her reactions kicked in, she hit him hard, a vicious backhander with all her back and shoulder muscles thrown into it, Collison Coppinger sailed through the air like he’d been yanked back by a speeder, hit one of the oversized windows at the back of the room and went straight through it, his head bent back at an awkward angle. Her blow had broken his neck on impact, she realised that with a sense of cool pleasure rupturing inside her.
Mission complete.
She stepped towards the back of the room, looked out the window into the night, saw him laid out on the path below, his body broken and contorted into angles the human body had never meant to experience.
She hadn’t wanted to hit him, she’d had no control over herself, seen every emotion and reacted as if it were a threat, rather than a genuine attempt to help her. So far, Collison Coppinger had been the only one to make the effort and not try to fight her, not try to kill her. And it hadn’t done him a damn bit of good, she thought, trying not to look at the body. Inside she was weeping and not even the flow of sweet, sweet narcotics straight into her system was enough to cut out that grief.
She’d completed her task. That was the long and short of it. No matter the cost.
“I’m sorry,” she said under her breath. A pointless sentiment. Nobody remained alive to hear it. Whatever it took to save her soul, she’d do it. She feared that might be beyond her at this point, but she knew what’d happen when someone found the means to kill her and where she’d be going. In her past, she’d never been especially devout. Now, though? It had taken her free will being stripped from her to realise just how far she’d fallen. The Divines must have had a plan when they’d given it to humanity and now it had been torn from her.
Truly, she’d been forsaken.
Chapter Seventeen. No Escaping Destiny.
“Threads. You assume all of what I did came together overnight? Not so. Not even close, I’ve been sewing this tapestry for years now, putting everything together to make my victory assured. A case of when, Subtractor. Not if. You’re a late arrival, I’ll forgive your lack of faith.”
Claudia Coppinger in discussion with Subtractor.
The first shots had been fired, the transports moved to moor just off the Tsarco islands, a trio of landmasses between Serran and Vazara, the decision made to use them as a staging point. Hovertanks rested across the decks of giant transport ships, aerofighters fuelling, ready to go at the command. Mazoud had made his choice, the attack on Serran was about to commence. He saw it through his tiny window, saw the fighters fly past and them all moving into position. Maybe ten miles to land, ten miles across open water. His geography had gone to hells, wasn’t his strongest subject at the best of times but now he couldn’t bring himself to care. In the distance, he could see the opposition moving into position. They might have been doing it for minutes, might have been hours. Time had ceased to be something he could gauge, he only knew night hadn’t fallen since they’d started.
He didn’t know how long he’d been in the cell, only that it had to have been months. Months since he’d had contact with any of his family or his friends or anyone with Unisco. He didn’t know what had happened to the outside world in the meantime. They could all be dead, this ship he’d been locked up on cutting him off from them all. The only voices he heard were those of his captors, his jailors and his torturers. Vazarans, all of them, big black bastards who’d all appeared to have studied at the same school of wanton brutality. He could have gone insane, the only reason he hadn’t was because he remembered his mission. He remembered that no matter what happened, he needed to make his time here matter. He’d gotten out once, had almost made it free but for a tremendous bit of bad luck. They’d caught him, just one more beating amidst the many.
He had to give them credit in one regard though, they’d seemed determined he didn’t die on them. When the beatings had finished, they’d made sure that he was patched up, kindness and cruelty in equal measure. He never faltered though. He remembered the mission. The mission was paramount. It was his sole guiding light, the whole reason for keeping on living when others might have given up.
Escape. Get the fuck out of here. Survive.
Unisco agents didn’t die easily and he’d gone through a lot of hard times for the agency, he’d drawn on every experience and memory to keep him on that path. They wouldn’t break him, he would not falter. And yet, they’d not asked him any questions, not asked him to betray those he worked with. That stunk of terror for him. It meant they were torturing him for torture’s sake and there was nothing worse. Those asking for information could be temporarily appeased by some small titbit that might take time to verify one way or another. Here, they just wanted to inflict pain, break him down, build him back up and break him down all again. He could admire the sophistication of it, a level he wouldn’t expect from primitive bloody savages like these men. Without reprieve, the pain became manageable, a constant
companion. When it was taken away, the memory faded into oblivion, only to come back when the torture resumed.
Someone else had to be behind it. He couldn’t attribute something like that to people like this. That he was in the hands of skilled madmen troubled him little. Those with skill had restraint. Those without, didn’t. And you were often in far more danger from unskilled lunatics than their better trained counterparts. Trained torturers kept you alive indefinitely, amateurs killed you by accident.
They’d come to feed him, left the door hanging open and he’d picked his moment. Only one guard, normally the door shut, maybe they thought him broken and tame. They’d grown lax and that was what he needed. His cell might have been just that, a cell, but he’d seen worse. When the pain had subsided, he’d worked to keep his muscles in shape, determined how when his moment came, he would take it. They had to have known and yet they’d let him carry on. Maybe they didn’t care. The flicker of hope remained in him, perhaps they didn’t want to crush it just yet. A hopeful prisoner could be broken. One without it wasn’t as fun. He was under no illusions. He’d tortured in the past, for Unisco, he knew what they were doing. Didn’t mean he could do much about it.
A single guard? Close quarters? Easy. He rose from the bed, smashed his foot into the base of the tray, sent the shit they served as slop flying everywhere, drove the tray into his head. As the guard went down, he snatched the tray, left a huge face-shaped dent in it as he clubbed his captor. He went down like he’d been shot and the Unisco agent was out of there, the first steps of freedom. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he needed to get out fast. He didn’t even know if this was the same ship he’d been secured on before. All cells looked the same on the inside.
