Corrupting Alicia

by Tsoukalas, Evan

  At least I thought so.

  Alicia apparently disagreed. She opened her mouth to speak, and before I could wave her words away, I heard an odd whine in the air, accompanied by a queasy feeling that violently rolled my stomach. I'm not sure what possessed me to react as I did, but it certainly saved her life.

  I flung my arms around her and spun us one hundred eighty degrees so that my body was between her and the street. I felt the burning sting of two sharp impacts on my back, both bullets lodging inside my chest. The third struck me high on the back of the head, the trajectory of the shot causing Blood and brain to rain down onto the top of Alicia's head. She let out a surprised grunt and then we were falling together, the stone steps doing their best to break us into pieces on the way down.

  I’d never been shot in the head before, and I can say that it is an experience I’m not keen to repeat. Actually, I can think of quite a few things I’d willingly surrender to have been able to avoid it the first time.

  I could hear the bullet digging a channel into my brain, but I felt nothing at all. It was an eerie disconnectedness that I’d felt only once prior, when revenant Blood invaded my system for the first time, but I imagine it must be something like an out-of-body experience.

  I had the impression that we were falling, and I watched the scenery catapult by, but my limbs were completely dead. I heard two distinct cracking sounds followed by another muffled groan, but because I was so out of touch with my own body, I had no point of reference to help me discern if the sounds were from me or Alicia.

  We came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the steps, and I was on my back, looking up at the night sky. I don't even think I was breathing, but my mind was still working. Two images repeated over and over: my first images of Gisele and Alicia, each superimposing the other repeatedly. It wasn’t exactly the banal "life flashing before my eyes" montage, but then again, I hadn’t experienced one of those during my first death, either.

  I lay there, so mesmerized by the show that it took me a while to make out a third image in the mix.

  Cassia.

  ◆◆◆

  Marley let out the half-breath he had been holding. When the time had come, his mind had not failed him, but had returned to the task at hand with mechanical precision. He could not, however, afford to let it wander again. The Devil had been correct. The man had not only been impossibly fast, but he had clearly been either psychic or had hearing far beyond the human scale. A part of Marley’s mind rejoiced that the Devil was not going to take him this time, but another part railed at the fact that he had quite possibly failed to complete his mission.

  His hands set to the task of breaking down his rifle as he worked through the details in his mind. The ammunition he had chosen for this job contained a Teflon jacket and a tungsten core, a combination capable of passing through body armor, even at subsonic speeds and a distance of over four hundred fifty meters. Though his initial brief had not mentioned body armor, the identity of his target suggested that its use was likely. If they were both wearing body armor, it was possible that the bullets had not penetrated both sets. Though not likely, the scenario had to be considered, especially when their fall down the stairs had severely diminished his target visibility. If he needed to shoot again to finish the job, he would not be able to do so from his current position.

  When the rifle was packed, he lifted a pair of binoculars for a final survey of the Kill Zone, and the unlikely became reality. His primary target was still alive and writhing around on the sidewalk. He could make out bloodstains on her clothing, but he could not tell if it was her own. The man had not moved, as was expected. Despite the fact that the bullets were designed to penetrate rather than expand to do more damage, the wounds should have been instantly mortal; he had put two rounds into the man's back at approximately 1/2 Minute-of-Angle, which at five hundred yards meant that they would both fit in a circle less than 2.5" in diameter. At least one, if not both, should have passed right through his heart, making the head shot as unnecessary as it was comforting.

  Surely the Devil knew pretty much everything, so why did she fail to mention the body armor?

  No time to think about that now, he thought, drawing his sidearm and screwing another Sound Tech silencer on the end of the threaded barrel. He was going to have to enter the KZ, something he hated to do. A good shooter should never have to get closer than his initial shot, and Marley had always considered himself a good shooter.

  It must have been the Devil's doing.

  Ready to go, he swept his immediate area once more for anything left behind. Satisfied, he put the binoculars back up to his eyes and swept the KZ one more time. His attention focused on the man, who had still not moved. The Devil's voiced ripped through his mind. She will be with someone very dangerous and impossibly quick. Someone infinitely more dangerous than the Devil herself.

  Who could be more dangerous than the Devil?

  Marley stared at the prone form for several seconds. A bullet to the head tended to remove all the danger from a man, as indeed was the case here. Perhaps she had been wrong in her assessment? Could the Devil even be wrong?

  He would find out soon enough.

  ◆◆◆

  I have no idea how long I lay there, unable to move, but it couldn't have been one millionth as long as it felt. Eventually, however, the flashing images in my head gave way to the pain. A pain that gave a fair rendition of the BloodHunger as it had been when I was first Converted. When it comes to injury, pain is always a good sign.

  Eye motion was my first bodily control to return, and I used it to the fullest despite the stab of pain that came with each movement. I saw a partial image of Alicia, one of her legs splayed at an awkward angle, too awkward for all the bones to be intact. When she moved, a long, low moan slipped from her lips, and I'm certain I would have jumped if I'd been able.

  I tried to speak but couldn't, but that was the least of my worries as someone stepped into my periphery. Out of instinct, I snapped my eyes back to center, and random thoughts flickered through my mind. Actually, random wasn't accurate; they were downright bizarre. Why would I be thinking about the Devil? I knew for a fact that he was a metaphor for anything possessing the ability to take a mortal's belief in God or incite him into rebellion. There have been many times in my second life when I’ve qualified for that moniker.

  Another image of Gisele flashed on my mind's theater, an image I was certain I'd never actually seen. As the man bent down to feel my throat for a pulse, I understood. These were his thoughts, my damaged mind not conforming to normal psychic convention. When he felt no pulse, he continued to stare at me, a silenced pistol pointed at my heart. He had been warned of the danger I posed him, and he had difficulty reconciling my lack of life with that image.

  Efforts to center my mind failed, and I found myself impotently wishing for him to be mesmerized by my dead body long enough to allow my control over my limbs to return. Already, I could feel the pain from the chest wounds as they began to mend and the cold, hard cement beneath me. As is usually the case with wishing, however, it didn't work.

  He turned his attention, and more importantly, the barrel of the silenced pistol toward Alicia. "Why does the Devil want you dead?" he asked, his face reacting to the words as if he'd never meant to speak at all. The words were bizarre enough to make me wonder if I was already dead, until I caught another flash of Marley's memory and all was clear.

  You will kill this woman, Gisele says as she holds out a picture of Alicia, or you will die in her place. Choose.

  Rage, thick and powerful, mushroomed inside my skull, and I wanted more than anything to tear Marley's limbs off, giving him drops of my Blood to keep him alive and in pain until I was finished showing him the real Devil, but despite the screaming voice inside my head, I couldn’t try to move until I was certain I could do more than twitch. To that end, I implemented a desperate gamble to keep his attention on me.

  "Marley, you’re wrong about her. She isn’t the
Devil."

  Marley turned on me so fast that his back cracked. His pistol coughed, but his hand was shaking so badly that the bullet whined off the sidewalk beside me. Unadulterated fear was so out of place on his face, the muscles completely unaccustomed to the motions required to generate that look. I wondered if he was going to correct his aim and try again, but I realized that it wasn’t likely. He had already shot me three times, all three mortal wounds, and it hadn’t done the job. He was currently of the opinion that he couldn’t kill me.

  If he only knew.

  "Who can be more powerful than the Devil?" he asked, his voice childlike with awe and trepidation. Anyone listening to this from the outside would assume that we were escaped mental patients, and despite the freakish direction of this conversation, it made perfect sense to me.

  "No one is more powerful than the Devil, Marley." Actually, that was patently untrue, but Marley did not believe in God. He’d be changing his tune soon enough. "That is why she cannot be the Devil."

  Marley seemed to accept this logic, or more to the point, he seemed to convince himself of this logic. "Then if she's not the Devil-" he began.

  "Then what is she?" I interrupted, finishing his thought for him. "I thought I knew the answer to that, but it looks like I was mistaken, too."

  Marley opened his mouth to speak, but his reply was drowned out by Alicia's primal scream as she pushed herself over onto her back and then silenced him with a full auto burst from her MP5. Marley's final thought bounced around inside my head like a pinball, bringing my rage back full force.

  I had somewhere to go after all.

  Demonstrating a control that I wasn’t sure I had recovered yet, I rolled away from his body as it fell to the ground. Lurching to my feet, I staggered over it and knelt beside Alicia. "How bad?" I asked her, resisting the urge to fix the positioning of her right leg so the toes pointed in the proper direction.

  "I'll live,” she murmured around the pain, her lips compressed into a thin, white line. “You?"

  "Same."

  "Wasn't sure you could survive that head shot." I could tell that wasn’t really what she wanted to say.

  "That makes two of us." Ditto for me.

  She noticed and apparently decided that the situation was too fucked up to do anything except keep it light. "How many more lunatics are we going to see tonight?"

  It was a good decision; I almost laughed. Instead, we shared a smile, and leaning closer to her, I kissed her lips gently. "You? None. Me? Just one more." When I stood, I felt close to being myself again, the rage filling in the gaps. I pulled my cell and dialed Bondermann. Despite the hour, he answered on the second ring.

  "Bondermann," he said, no traces of sleep in the sound.

  "There's been an event," I opened somberly, giving him our position and telling him to assemble and send the entire detail immediately. I hung up before he could ask any questions. "They're on the way," I said, moving back to Alicia's side. "They'll get you to a hospital and take over from there."

  "And you?" she asked. Her voice was weak but steady.

  Leaning close, I gently pulled the MP5 from her grasp. "I have a lunatic to see," I answered, wiping the weapon clean and then throwing it next to Marley’s corpse.

  "Anyone I know?" she joked, fully expecting the loon to be revenant. My news took her breath away.

  "Let's just say you'll need a new lieutenant."

  She flinched, the movement making her grimace and inhale sharply. "DeShawn," she spat around the pain, her nostrils flaring, not so much surprised as angry. Very angry. "He did this?"

  "No, but he knew it was coming. Marley called DeShawn when he figured out who you were, and DeShawn offered to match the fee if Marley included me in the hit."

  Alicia’s eyes closed for a moment, and I would have given a billion dollars to know what she was thinking. "Nice," she said disgustedly, her eyes fluttering open. “What are our lives worth?”

  “A hundred twenty grand,” I answered with a shrug, wondering if that was high or low. Revenants didn’t pay each other in cash to knock people off; we used the barter system. Or the threat system. Or the “You owe me” system.

  Alicia whistled, obviously finding that number sufficiently large. "His usual fee is twenty-five thousand. What was all that shit about the Devil?"

  "Gisele," I answered, the word sounding lifeless.

  I think Alicia had already deduced that, and it seemed to stun her that I answered her honestly. Or maybe it was just another bolt of pain. "I'm afraid I have to agree with Marley," she said, and I could tell she wanted to say other things, but she was treading carefully.

  "Yeah, well don't worry," I replied grimly. "After I'm finished with DeShawn, she's next." To punctuate that statement, I ignited all of my spilt Blood on the ground and watched as it flared briefly and then burned out, leaving a patchwork of dark, greasy stains on the pavement.

  ◆◆◆

  Richter's entire detail approached the building like it was an enemy encampment, weapons overt and ready, SWAT-style. The active squad, led by Rio, saw immediately to Alicia while the other two canvassed the immediate area for hostiles. Bondermann approached me, his eyes quick, wary and concerned.

  "A lot of blood," he said, referring to my clothing. I would have had a hard time explaining it without any wounds, but Bondermann didn't make the observation because he cared about me; it was simply his minimalist way of probing how much of it was Alicia's.

  "It's mine and his, and it doesn't matter.”

  "Right," he agreed with a nod and then gestured at Marley's rifle case, which had been discovered less than a block away. "The rifle in there doesn't miss, and these," he paused to pass me an unused rifle round, "would've punched right through her armor." I surveyed the round in silence, which I hoped pointed to a sober reflection of what might have been instead of the fact that I could add nothing intelligent to a conversation about munitions. "I don't know how you managed it, but she's damn fortunate." A part of him was hoping to get an elaboration from me, but I took the compliment in silence as well.

  Rio interrupted us to report on Alicia's condition. "Both her legs are broken, but it doesn't look like any of the arteries were ruptured. A couple of minor abrasions, possibly from the fall down the steps, but no gunshot wounds." Bondermann nodded. "Want me to check you out?" she asked me, her voice softening just enough to be noticeable.

  "I'm fine," I dismissed with a small smile. Her concern was touching.

  Bondermann gave her a peculiar look but made no comment on her offer. "Secure SERENITY and get her immediate medical attention. Send Alpha Detail to ARO the nearest trauma center, just in case. Notify me when they're ready to receive."

  “Roger that,” she replied crisply, her tender, maternal moment forgotten. She turned sharply and went off to carry out her orders. Bondermann looked up at the sky as I watched her walk away in silence, and when I turned my attention back to him, he spoke.

  “What now?”

  “The ball’s yours. I’ll call Richter when I get a chance and authorize him to retool the detail however he wants. Until then, you’re the man.”

  “The police?”

  “Tell them whatever you want; I’m just hoping you leave me out of it. She’s not shot, and there’s nothing to tie her to the scene, so you can avoid the hard questions if you want. My opinion, it’ll be easier if you keep this contained; the cops around here are not always on the side of angels.” I paused to let Bondermann consider that for a few moments, and then I continued with a shrug. “One way or another, I plan to be finished before they can make a difference, so it doesn’t matter to me.”

  He was silent for a few moments of pensive concentration. His ability to compartmentalize both information and thoughts was quite impressive. “You need help?”

  Unexpected. I threw him a questioning look. "You offering?”

  “Not really, but I know some people...”

  I considered it, and though it had some merit for Alicia’
s future plans, I thought it would be better if they made that deal without me. “I’m sure you do, but I think it’s best if you distance yourself, and your boss, from what I’m about to do.”

  ◆◆◆

  Watching the security force scurry around Alicia like rodents, Gisele considered jumping into the fray and taking her rage out on as many as possible before Jason ended her existence... and her suffering. His reaction had stunned her. There was no way he could have detected Marley, yet he had still managed to keep Alicia from meeting her Maker. The most likely explanation was that he had somehow felt her presence, despite the great care she had exercised to remain undetected, and it had alerted him to the danger.

  Gisele cursed her need to watch Alicia die and the subsequent need to watch Jason’s reaction to that event. She wanted to blame Marley, but she could not. His initial shots had been flawless, and it had been dumb luck that his targets had tumbled together out of his line of sight, a twist of Murphy that had deprived Marley of his life and Gisele of her revenge. Despite her warning and his half-belief that she was the Devil, Marley still had no idea what he had been up against, a disadvantage he simply could not overcome.

  Even at their best, mortals were wholly inadequate, effective only in demonstrating why they were worthless as anything but food.

  Instinctively, she held her breath while Jason spoke to a member of the professional security team who had arrived minutes earlier and blanketed the scene with breathtaking precision. As the two men spoke, she wished that she had learned to read lips, more so when a female member of the team, apparently charged with assessing Alicia’s condition, reported to the both of them. Their reactions gave nothing away, and the female moved back toward Alicia. Several hand signals later, five security people piled into a ridiculously large SUV with windows so dark that they matched its glossy black paint job, and it tore away from the curb.