Second Chance Angel

by Griffin Barber

  “Doesn’t look like there’s much security on site,” Ncaco said after a brief examination.

  “Always there’s the balancing act between secrecy and security: too much on-site security and people start asking questions about what’s there to protect. Probably figured that between total secrecy and paying everyone who should have an interest to look the other way, they had protection enough.” Angel’s voice projected from hidden speakers.

  I shook my head.

  “What?” Angel asked.

  “Still want to know what your operational specialty was.”

  “If you can’t guess by now, civilian, you just might be an idiot.”

  I laughed aloud.

  “There’s a few blank spots in the schematic, but I think we have enough data to plan our entry.”

  “And here I was planning on going in through the front door and seeing where it takes us.”

  “Because that’s worked so well for us in the past.”

  “When didn’t it work?”

  “For certain values of work, I suppose it has. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t prefer a dynamic entry, guns hot.”

  I shook my head and looked at Ncaco. “If we had a team to back us, sure.”

  “Sorry, that can’t happen. I have others to protect. Interests. Plans.”

  “Sure, Ncaco.” I couldn’t really blame him, so I managed to say it without too much bitterness making it to my voice.

  “With their limited on-site security and relatively short distance we have to cover to gain access to the morgue, we should be able to manage without backup, so long as we commit to violence of action and roll in hot,” Angel continued, ignoring Ncaco’s refusal to help further.

  “Why so bloodthirsty?” he asked.

  “The site is small enough, and the security light enough, I think it will work. And frankly, I am quite tired of fucking around with these assholes. These people somehow think they can get away with kidnapping people and perverting their angels in order to destroy what makes them people. Every moment we let them live is another they can spend enacting this evil on Siren or any other veteran they have their shit-stained hands on. Besides, it’s not as if we are going to be able to bring these creatures to face justice.”

  While I agreed with her assessment, I still had reservations. “Rolling in hot usually means increased risk to hostages. I don’t want to hurt any innocents if we can help it.”

  “Nor do I. Yet I still believe speed of action is the best course.”

  I considered, tried to find fault with her logic, but really, Angel had a better grasp on tactics for this sort of thing than I did.

  To be honest, I wanted payback too. Payback for the shit Angel and I had been through. Payback for the shit I would have to go through again, should we find Siren.

  I felt something break loose in my chest at the thought of losing Angel. It snarled and snapped, ready to do unto others as had been done unto me.

  “All right, we do it your way,” I said, confining my rage with thoughts of vengeance coldly exacted. It would not serve to lose all control.

  “Right,” Angel said. Siren’s face appeared, feral grin flashing as she brought up the schematic for review.

  Ncaco didn’t bother to see us out.

  * * *

  “What’s wrong, Muck?”

  “This doesn’t feel right,” I said. For maybe the fifth time.

  “What?”

  I walked through another doorway, started down the stairs beyond. Like the rest of the hospital, the stairwell gleamed in the harsh, white overhead lamps. We’d entered through a hatch from the same maintenance shafts we’d used to get on to Last Stop, and the contrast between bright, surgical white walls and the dirt, grime, and moist atmosphere of the maintenance areas was striking.

  “This shouldn’t be this easy. We know they had Siren in a medical pod before, right? Someone could just come along and steal her. Where’s their security?”

  “I’m sure we could head up to the floor Shar Pak was on and find the fellow whose knee you broke and question him, if that would make you feel better. I mean, I prefer walking in without being challenged, but if you want to see the nurse you tried to cripple, I’m sure something can be arranged.”

  “Fuck you, Angel.” I exited the stairwell and hit the door at speed.

  “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, Muck?”

  “Leave Momma Muck out of this.”

  “As you wish.”

  I sighed with relief when I spotted the large door marked MORGUE. Making it this far without hospital security detecting the weapons weighing down the low-tech bag slung from my armored shoulder was a minor miracle. Coming to a stop, I kicked off my shoes, giving Angel direct contact to the building’s infonet.

  Done. Go.

  I pulled the Max-33 out of the bag, locking the shoulder stock of the ugly little weapon into the gimbal of my body armor with a click. I let it hang as I pulled the combat webbing out and draped it over my shoulders. Smart fabrics arranged themselves, forming connections and pulling the grenades and sidearm into place even as I took up the grips of the Max again and pointed it at the door.

  Angel started feeding me intel from the security cams, an overlay subtly heightening perception without drowning me in data. I moved forward into the long hall that split the front part of the facility. A reception desk sat, unoccupied, just before me. The hall was lined with metal drawers—more than should ever be necessary short of a battle on the station.

  I walked past the desk, the Max up and ready.

  “There’s an office behind the desk. Occupied. They’re not armed. Locking them in.”

  Angel painted two outlines on the walls, moving toward me from either side of the T intersection the hallway I was in ended on.

  “Two guards. Alerted when I took the system over.”

  I slowed my advance down the hall. The one on the right was moving faster, so I targeted him, tracking through the wall as he approached. The target emerged from the corner. I had time to register a bored expression on a youngish face under the helmet before I gently squeezed the trigger on the Max. The man’s head pulped as three rounds entered his skull between the eyes.

  Tearing my eyes from the corpse before it fell, I swiveled to cover the other target, but she’d stopped on seeing her partner’s brains splash the wall. I dropped my aim a bit and put some rounds through the wall and into center mass. Body armor stopped the rounds, and the security guard’s reaction was natural—and entirely wrong: she flinched away from the cover of the wall and into view as I advanced. I put two rounds into her head under the helmet as soon as her face came into view.

  “That’s it for armed security. Two more staff visible on the cams, both down the right-hand hall. They are sheltering in place and trying to call for help.”

  “Let me know if they move.” I swept left at the junction and did a full three sixty. Doors at both ends of the hall, leading to the blank spaces on the map. I decided on the one I could access without setting my bare feet in blood and brains.

  “Not enough room behind the door for more than a few people, Muck.”

  “Copy,” I answered without stopping. Stopping would mean I’d have to think, process what I’d just done. I blinked sweat from my eyes and positioned myself off to one side of the door.

  “Opening.”

  I crossed the threshold as soon as the door slid open enough for my shoulders, sweeping the room for targets. When I was sure there were none, I allowed myself a moment to take in the details. It was an operating theater, or something. Banks of electronics and robot arms with odd waldos at the ends surrounded a bed that had even more bells and whistles.

  Angel’s rage-filled snarl startled me.

  “What the fuck?” I grated, carefully removing my finger from the Max’s trigger.

  “
This is where it happened.”

  “It?”

  “Where they took Siren from me—or me from Siren, whatever.”

  “Ah.” I didn’t see any exits. “Can you access any of the systems in here?”

  “Not without more time than we have. They plugged the security gap I used to escape. Part of the reason this is a dead zone from outside.”

  “All right.” I reversed direction and started to leave.

  “Hold up.”

  “What?”

  “Drop an EMP in here before you go. I don’t think they should profit from their latest research, do you?”

  In answer, I took the flat blue-gray grenade from my harness and keyed it to delay for five seconds. I tossed it on the bed and left. Angel closed the door behind me, deadening the blast and protecting us from the radiation and magnetic pulse intended to disrupt any system memory. It wouldn’t do much to hardened systems, but none of the equipment looked like military hardware, so it should fry quite nicely. It wouldn’t stop them using the data they already had, but Angel was right, it felt good to deny them something.

  I had the Max up again as I navigated the spreading pool of blood from the second security guard and approached the other end of the hall.

  When I was in position, Angel opened the door.

  Sweeping in, I had two targets. One in a lab coat, the other seemed to flow across the room at me, vaulting beds without slowing. I squeezed the trigger—

  “STOP!” Angel screamed as my weapon discharged.

  Siren—bulkier, with far more muscle than she’d ever had before, but still unmistakably Siren—staggered, but kept coming. Lab Coat was leveling something that looked like a pistol at me as well, hands moving at a more normal pace.

  “Fuck!”

  Figuring a wounded Siren was the lesser threat, I put one through Lab Coat’s nose.

  Siren’s heel slammed into me at the shoulder, bending the stock of the Max-33 and forcing a grunt from me. I staggered sideways as her follow-up thumped into the armor covering my ribs, grunted as her fist clouted me in the opposite ear.

  I let the Max drop, covering myself.

  Siren kept up her assault: knees, elbows, fists, feet, all of them cracking against, and sometimes through, my defenses. Muscles aside, she moved like raging water. I couldn’t get away.

  “Angel?” I gasped, as Siren’s long dark hair smacked my chin a half second before her elbow followed up.

  “Demon! I . . . am . . . trying . . .”

  “Fuck.” Knowing Angel needed more constant contact with Siren to combat her demon, I took several blows to the face in order to come to grips with her. A heel found the inside of my knee as I closed my hands on her shoulders. I nearly blacked out from the pain, but used the sudden lack of support to pull Siren into me.

  The pair of us swaying like a couple of drunks, I used my weight to pull her further and further off balance. She reared back, pushing with both arms to create space between us. Seeing it coming, I averted my face just before her forehead lashed forward into my skull.

  Stars exploded. I held on through their coronas, crushing death to me.

  Somewhere, I could hear Angel sobbing.

  I felt her moving inside my head, feeling the fear, the loss.

  Siren stopped resisting my pull, powered into me, forearm across my throat. We fell to the floor together, her atop me, lashing limbs and grunts of effort a savage parody of lovers at play.

  “Siren, stop. Please, stop,” I gasped.

  She made no reply, other than biting me at the throat. The armor stopped most of it, but it was intended to stop high-velocity attacks, not the slow application of teeth backed by the strongest muscles in the human body.

  “Can’t. Win.” I wasn’t sure if I said it, or if Angel was speaking.

  “Not like this,” Angel said. “Her demon has her.”

  “But Dengler . . .” I gasped.

  “Not like Dengler. No angel. Only demon.”

  I screamed then, frustration and anger, fear and pain shredding thought and technique. I freed an arm, slammed that fist into Siren’s ribcage. Did it again. Again. Felt her grip on me loosen. Kept punching as fast as I could.

  She tried to take my back, but I rolled into her weakened side, forced her onto her back. She bit me again, this time taking my ear.

  I shrieked, the world strobing red and black and back again.

  Her clawed fingers went for my eyes, gouging one.

  I quit.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Angel

  He slid away. I tried to catch him, tried to keep him in place, but the pain and the rage and the grief surged through us, liquefying his consciousness, pulling him down and away from me.

  “No!” I screamed in the echoing emptiness of our mind. It came back at me, like a mockery.

  “Stay with me,” I begged, pleaded, chanted like a spell or a talisman against the growing silence. “Muck, stay with me.”

  It was no use. He just kept slipping down and away. I could feel him dying, and I couldn’t do anything about it. A new feeling wound through me: a dragging, soaking kind of emotion that shadowed my thoughts and made me feel thin and faded.

  “No,” I said again. “Nononononono—”

  I slammed into override. It was risky, but I couldn’t hold on to him anyway. I had to get away from this bitch first . . .

  Siren.

  My host.

  The bitch that was trying to kill me.

  Again.

  The physical world exploded back into being for me. I ripped my head to the side, feeling a wet sort of pop as her fingernails obliterated my right eyeball. More pain lanced through me, but I wrapped it in the anger that fountained up from deep inside and used it to fuel my rage. I grabbed her hand and forced it down across her throat, holding her immobile with my weight.

  “All I ever wanted was to protect you,” I said, my male voice a guttural growl. “And all you ever wanted was for me to die.”

  “What are you talking about?” she gasped, her lovely voice twisted into something hateful. “You’re nothing. Just a crippled bouncer making calf-eyes at me across the bar. You never protected me from shit.”

  “I was your ANGEL,” I screamed, feeling my throat shred with the force of my anger and betrayal. “I did everything for you. I woke you when you dreamed of killing those kids over and over again. I suppressed your memories when they got to be too much for you. I kept that stupid drug dealer Shar from getting his hands on you because you were too damn suicidal and lethargic to care!”

  Siren blinked her eyes in confusion, and that was the opening I needed. Faster than thought, I jacked our system with everything that we had, and seized that moment of her hesitation.

  I bore down on her forearm with all of my weight and augmented strength. I felt her bones crack under my fingers, but I kept at it. Her eyes began to bulge, and she tried to scream once again. Her pupils contracted, probably the result of her demon going into override . . . or more so, I guess. The old Siren would never have been this aggressive on her own.

  Or maybe that was just what I was telling myself.

  Her pupils contracted, and I knew I had milliseconds. I felt her other arm coming up like a slow-motion battering ram to hammer into my injured face. I ignored it and slammed down on her throat again.

  Something popped in her shoulder. Her larynx cracked, and her mouth opened in a silent scream. Again and again she hit me, beating my face to a pulp. But I kept bearing down.

  Because, demon or no demon, she had to breathe.

  Her blows became weaker, more erratic. Her eyes bulged even more. Her lips turned blue as she gasped, dragging at the air. Her eyes turned to me, pleading.

  I held her gaze and hoped she knew it was me watching as her light faded out. Not Muck. Me.

  Shit!<
br />
  Muck.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I pushed off of Siren’s corpse and reached frantically inside us for his presence.

  Nothing.

  I let out a gasp and reached again. He had to be there. He had to!

  “Muck!” I screamed in the silence of our mind “Muck! You can’t leave me here alone!”

  Nothing.

  Tears flooded my good eye, running in rivulets as hot as the blood on the other side. Something sharp squeezed my chest, and now it was me who sucked in air. He had to be there! He couldn’t be gone! I was still here! I couldn’t exist without him . . . it was impossible.

  But then, so were a lot of things I’d done. Like crying, and fearing, and . . .

  And loving him.

  Fuck me. I loved him.

  “Muck!” I screamed again, thrusting my awareness down into the depths of the body’s subconscious memory storage. “Where are you? You can’t leave me alone!”

  Without regard for privacy or protocol, I plunged through his memories like a comet making its last dive toward its star. I didn’t care what I saw or how, I just had to find him.

  I raced through the halls of his memory, past faded images of another Speaker, this one a stern older man. Past a woman, beautiful and laughing, giving herself to him. Past a sergeant, putting his hand on a young Muck’s shoulder, eyes full of compassion . . .

  I slammed to a stop, hard, against the memory block.

  If there was any of him left, it would be hunkered here, buried deep beneath these forgotten experiences. I rocketed from fragment to fragment, until I ran headlong into that same block, a barrier so complete that it made me scream out loud.

  I’d forgotten about the memory tampering, the damage that had been done to him intentionally, that formed so much of who he’d become after the war.

  Pain stabbed me, electrifying my synapses with an overcharge of sensation. I stumbled back from the barrier, crying. This was it. I’d looked everywhere else. If he was anywhere, he would be behind this block, sunk in the mire of the misery visited on him by others, waiting to face his ultimate judgment . . .