The Legend of the Red Specter (The Adventures of the Red Specter Book 1)

by M. A. Wisniewski

  The Triads and Guardsmen had gone back to bickering. Joy heard Daphne insisting she had all the exits secured, that no-one could've escaped, while the Chief was certain they'd swept the aisles, and nobody was there. Shiori seemed to be the only one with the idea to include "up" as a direction to look, but she did so only occasionally, and Joy made sure to pull her head way back when that happened, which meant she couldn't watch Shiori any more. Instead she looked at the Red Specter, who shrank back into the shadow of a triangular plate between the I-beam and a vertical support. When the Specter peered out from his cover, Joy knew it was safe for her to do so, too.

  She heard Benny's voice drift up from below. "Still here? Let's test that. Forget finding them. We'll make them come to us. We've still got something they want."

  Joy froze as she realized the implications. He was talking about Lin Lin. All he had to do was threaten to hurt her unless they turned themselves in. But if they did that, they'd surely be killed. But they couldn't let Lin Lin get tortured on their accounts, either. That was too awful to contemplate.

  What could they do? Did the Red Specter have any ideas? He was the expert here... Maybe? She gazed over at him with pleading eyes, but he didn't acknowledge her at all, the impassive glass circles of his mask studying the scene below.

  Joy turned back to the scene, to the two thugs holding Lin Lin, and Benny standing right next to her. The poor girl was utterly terrified.

  "Listen up," Benny yelled. "Because—"

  Bright light flooded in through the small windows located high up on the warehouse wall, and a new, somewhat tinny voice echoed out through the night.

  "ATTENTION. ATTENTION. THIS IS THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION OF THE KALLISTRATE INTELLIGENCE BUREAU. ALL OCCUPANTS OF WAREHOUSE 23C, YOU ARE TO EXIT THE BUILDING AND SURRENDER YOURSELVES FOR QUESTIONING. REPEAT: ALL OCCUPANTS OF WAREHOUSE 23C, YOU ARE TO EXIT THE BUILDING AND SURRENDER YOURSELVES FOR QUESTIONING. THIS INCLUDES MR. BEN LI FANG, ASSOCIATES SHIORI ROSEWING AND DAPHNE CHOW, CHIEF AEDAN GALLACH, SERGEANTS CIARAN MACINROY AND DAVIN BRANNOCK, EVERYBODY. WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE. YOU WILL EXIT THE BUILDING WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD. YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO COMPLY, OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO COME IN AFTER YOU. REPEAT: YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE..."

  Joy tuned out the rest of the Special Operations agent's droning speech, reeling from the shock of it. KIB Special Operations? That was new. But they'd gotten her letter! Wait, no they hadn't. That was impossible. There was no way they could've even received her letter already, let alone mobilized a task force this quickly. Unless they had agents stationed inside each and every mailbox in Kallistrate monitoring everyone's correspondence for intel.

  Joy suppressed a hysterical giggle at the thought, and glanced over at the Red Specter. If he was at all surprised at the sudden appearance of the KIB out of nowhere, he didn't show it. Instead he pulled something from his coat. At first glance, Joy mistook it for a small umbrella, but it opened the wrong way, in a cone of some stiff material, and what would've been the hook on an umbrella got held up to a port on the side of the Red Specter's head, around where his ear should be. A directional listening device? He had it trained on the Triads and Guardsmen, who'd clustered together in a fervent discussion. Were they actually going to work together now, united against a common enemy? At least they'd bought some time.

  Suddenly, the two groups split up. It seemed a decision had been reached. Benny's group began to shift over to one side of the warehouse, while the Guardsmen clustered in a circle around Brannock, the Chief and the blazing signal flare. They bowed their heads as the Chief started talking, but Joy couldn't make any of it out.

  She felt a tap on the crown of her head, looked up to see the Specter stow his listening device and gesture at her to follow him. He headed off in the same direction as the Triad group, darting across the grid of warehouse cross-beams like he'd been born up here. Joy couldn't go nearly that fast, though overall she thought she did a decent job keeping up with him. As she went, she couldn't help sneaking glances at the circle of renegade City Guard, who'd begun chanting, swaying back and forth, bobbing their heads in unison. She caught up to the Red Specter, who turned his back to her, went down on one knee, and motioned for her to get on.

  A piggyback ride? Well, okay then. It took a second for Joy to even figure out how to manage this. The Red Specter had a weapon strapped crosswise across his back, his two-part spear weapon, just like in the comics. She still managed to get on, but she had a steel bar pressing painfully across her chest, and it took her a minute to find the right angle for her legs to wrap around his torso without banging into some hard lump of spy equipment. Well, the Red Specter had never claimed to be built for comfort, had he? Actually, once she was in position, the lumps of gadget whatevers seemed to be pretty secure on his hips, providing a shelf to keep her from slipping down.

  The Specter glanced over his shoulder, gave her a thumbs-up, and began moving again, picking his way through the rafters, stalking the Triad group, who'd gathered at a point at the side of the building, about three-quarters of the way to the back. Most of the Triad men were standing in two rows, carrying a big fat section of what appeared to be a ship mast, pointing it perpendicular to the wall. Daphne had finally stowed her glasses and clipboard and stood on guard at Benny's side, brandishing a shiny silver derringer. Even at this distance, Joy noted by the way it gleamed that it had ornate engraved patterns with gold leaf accents. Dammit, even her gun was cute. Lin Lin still had one large thug holding onto her. She looked terrified and confused.

  The Specter had his grapple-gun out. He'd led Joy on a path taking them around to get between the main front entrance and the cluster of Triad-men. Now he was edging them towards the wall, attention focused on the group of criminals. Was he preparing to swoop down and snatch up Lin-Lin? Joy sure hoped so. A noise from the center of the warehouse caught her attention. The chanting of the Guardsmen reached a crescendo, and they peeled away from Brannock, many of them giving him half-hugs or pats on the back as they did. They couldn't give him full hugs, because he had the signal flare taped to his stump. He staggered towards the main warehouse door, muttering and shaking, while one last Guardsman ran ahead of him. The rest of them ran to join the Triad cluster.

  Outside, the KIB called out their final warning, telling the criminals to come out or else. The last Guardsman yanked one side of the warehouse door open and sprinted away, revealing Brannock, with his jacket of explosives and dead man's switch—a detail the KIB couldn’t miss, thanks to the harsh illumination from his flare. At the same time the door opened, Joy heard a hiss of air from the Specter’s harpoon gun. She felt his muscles tense, preparing to push off. She looked down at their target, saw Shiori had scored a huge 'X' in the side of the wall with her polearm-blade, while the Triad-men began preparatory swings with the ship mast—a battering ram?

  Why not use a door? Because the KIB would have all the doors covered, of course.

  Joy heard the KIB loudspeaker switch to placating tones, trying to calm Brannock. But Brannock was beyond listening, chanting some type of litany, in a language Joy didn't recognize. There were plenty of languages she didn't speak, but normally she could at least identify what they were, or make a rough guess as to what linguistic family they belonged to, but the noises coming out of Brannock's mouth were wholly alien. They repeated in a sequence, growing louder, more fervent. This was no bluff. Brannock was going to sacrifice himself so everyone else could escape in the chaos of the explosion.

  Brannock's mantra hit a fever pitch, in defiance of the increasingly desperate cajoling over the loudspeaker, as the Triad men reared back, ready to charge. Joy couldn't stop herself from staring at the fanatic, as he finished his litany in an ecstatic shriek. She watched in horrified fascination as he released the switch...

  ...And nothing happened. Brannock stared at his trigger, dumbfounded, pressed it a couple times, shook it—still no boom. The men carrying the ram stumbled, bumped into each other and shouted, confused by their botche
d cue.

  The Red Specter gave her a quick over-the-shoulder glance, and the angle was such that she was able to peer through his goggle-lens and see the real eyes beneath. They twinkled with mirth. He held up something in his free hand for a second. Joy got a brief look at it before he dropped it—two disconnected wires. He'd disarmed the bomb? When had he... It must have been when the lights went out. Well, it did make sense—of course that'd be the first thing you'd--

  The Red Specter sprang into action. Time slowed down for Joy, as they leapt out into space and began their swing. She saw Lin Lin's captor turn, distracted, as Benny yelled at his men to ram the wall anyway. The Specter had it timed and targeted perfectly. But they hadn't swung more than a few feet before a hideous scream drew her attention back to Brannock, who charged out toward the lights of the KIB, and was met with a hail of bullets in response. The fanatic pitched forward, limbs twisting about. Joy would never know if what happened next was by accident or design, but the result was the same, as Branock brought the end of the white-hot signal flare around to touch his own chest, and he disappeared in a flash of light and an ear-splitting roar.

  A concussive blast of air hit Joy from the side, and she clung tighter to the Red Specter's neck, even as she felt her legs come loose from his waist. Even worse, the shock knocked them sideways during their swing, and Joy saw them headed straight for one of the warehouse's upper windows for a brief second before the Specter's trench-coat whipped up and tangled around her.

  Crashing through the window pane barely slowed their momentum. Far worse was the jolt when their tethering harpoon ripped free of its anchor point, leaving them spinning through space, out of control.

  Joy resisted the impulse to cling to the Specter. Instead she pushed away, following her instinct to tuck and roll against the coming impact, free of obstructions. The Red Specter had other ideas, re-grabbing her and pulling her to his chest, spinning them mid-air to crash against a wall of corrugated tin. The impact collapsed it inward, sending them both through several layers of junk before they came to rest in a huge pile of detritus and refuse.

  Joy groaned and tried to take stock of herself. She thought she was still in one piece. Still had feeling in all her fingers and toes. Which, in the case of her busted pinky finger, was a mixed blessing. Anything else? She had a couple nasty cuts, and a small piece of glass lodged in her right forearm. She'd have gotten way worse if the Specter's heavy canvas trench-coat hadn't flipped up like that—had he done that deliberately? She'd landed on top of him, and he wasn't moving. But she felt a rise and fall in his chest. Still breathing.

  This was the first time she'd had a chance to get a really good look at his costume, at the body armor he had beneath the trench-coat. And it was armor, some kind of leathery substance—only it was scaly. The scales varied in size—wider body panels had larger scales, connected together with strips of the same material with finer scales. The connective material seemed to have been treated differently, was much more flexible, while the larger panels were stiff, almost like plates. As Joy looked closer, she saw some of the scales had cracked, were hanging off, or missing completely. Was that the damage from the gunshots? She was about to check when the Specter groaned, raised his head, and looked at her.

  "Are you okay?" she said.

  "YES. NO NEED TO YELL."

  She was about to protest that she wasn't yelling, but noticed a weird ringing in her head, along with an odd muffled sensation. "I think the bomb hurt my ears a little. Hearing weird echoes of it."

  "THOSE ARE GUNSHOTS. NEED TO MOVE NOW," said the Specter.

  "Can't you move—oh! Oops!" Said Joy, as she realized that not only had she landed on top of the Red Specter, she was straddling him. In a swimsuit. She scrabbled to her feet and stood up, getting a better look at where they were. It was kind of a like a apartment complex of shacks—some storage structure that had fallen into disrepair. The walls had been formed from tin strips nailed together, and their entry had punched one of those strips inward and peeled it overtop other junk piles.

  The Specter climbed back up the pile and stood at its apex, looking into the alleyway separating them from the Triad warehouse. Joy followed, only to run into a group of men in strange uniforms pointing guns at them.

  "Halt! Put your hands over…" said one of them, before a flash of recognition came over his features, and he relaxed, pointing his gun at the sky. "Oh, it's you. What's—"

  "ESCAPE ATTEMPT. HEADING TO PIER 25. JOANNE SPAULDING. HEAVILY ARMED. DOZEN MANTICORES. ONE HOSTAGE: GIRL IN CHAINS.”

  "Shit! Okay, noted. We'll be... Wait, who's that?" said the man, noticing Joy for the first time.

  “INTERNATIONAL WOMAN'S LIBERATION LEAGUE AGENT."

  Confusion played across the man's face. "Woman's Liberation... What the Abyss is—"

  "WASTING TIME NOW."

  "Yes, right," said the man, who Joy supposed must be one of these new KIB Special Operations people, and turned to the rest of his team. "Okay, let's move it, people. Going to intercept, stay alert."

  He trotted off, past the gaping hole in the wall where the Triads had broken through, the rest of his team in tow. Joy was watching them go, when she felt the Red Specter grab her by the shoulders, spin her around so she was facing him, his mask inches away from her face. In the dim light, his goggles were black mirrors, so she could see herself looking thoroughly intimidated.

  "YOU," he growled, the harsh gravel sound echoing from his mask. "HAVE MADE A HUGE MESS."

  "Uhhh..." She said, remembering her errant boat flare from earlier. What had Benny said? Torched half the docks? Was there any good way to try and explain that was an accident?

  The Specter leaned in, and she leaned back, wondering what kind of trouble she was in, only to see him relent.

  "GOALS ADMIRABLE," he said, and poked her hard in the sternum. "NEXT TIME, BE MORE CAREFUL."

  "Uh, yeah," she said, putting on what she hoped was her best inoffensive smile. "Careful is good. Definitely need more of that."

  "DEFINITELY," said the Specter, and hopped down to the street. Joy eyed the distance and prepared to follow, until she realized she didn't have to. Did she?

  "You'll catch them, won't you?" she called out. "And Lin Lin! Promise me you'll rescue her."

  The masked figure turned back to gaze up at her. "THE RED SPECTER ALWAYS PREVAILS."

  And then he was off, heading in a different direction than the Special Operations agents. Was that an intercept course? Or maybe a flanking maneuver?

  Whatever. It didn't matter. Wasn't her business. She was done for the night. The Red Specter and the KIB would rescue Lin Lin. She had to trust them. If she followed, she'd only end up getting in their way.

  Joy sat down on the bent-over tin panel and took a moment to catch her breath. What now? She looked up to the sky, to the stars fading under the light of the encroaching dawn. Then she looked over to the spire of the Kovidhian temple, rearing up over the rest of the city skyline. Hsiu Mei and Mrs. Jakuba waited for her there. And Lin Lin would join them shortly. Man, she had a story for them. Though maybe she should edit out some of the really scary bits, for Mrs. Jakuba's sake. And then she'd be fussing for weeks about Joy’s super-dangerous reporter job, not that being a reporter was normally this dangerous—it was just this whacko assignment...

  Joy's whole train of thought came to a screeching halt as she realized something. Something important. The whole reason she'd gotten into this mess in the first place.

  She'd met the Red Specter. She'd stared him in the eyes. She'd even talked to him.

  And she'd forgotten to ask for an interview.

  Joy leapt down to the alleyway and tore off in a dead sprint in the direction she'd last seen the Specter, determined to chase him down.

  Chapter 47

  I'm Helping!

  The Red Specter wasn't an easy man to spot. Joy turned the corner and caught a bare flicker of motion heading off into an alleyway. There was no way to be sure that was him, but she ch
ased after it nonetheless. She could not let him get away.

  Across the docks, Joy heard a chorus of yelling, punctuated with sporadic cracks. Must be the Triads and the KIB exchanging fire. Joy resolved to stay clear of them if possible, though the Specter seemed to be taking them closer. Already Joy felt her lungs burning from the effort of her sprint, but she resolved to dig deeper, for just a little longer. All she had to do was reach a point where she could keep him in her sights, while keeping out of sight herself. And then, once the whole fracas had ended, she could—

  Joy turned another corner and ran right into the Red Specter's chest. She bounced off, and would've fallen if he hadn't grabbed her by the shoulders.

  "WHAT'S WRONG?" He said. "YOU BEING CHASED?"

  Beneath the odd gravelly rumble, the Specter's voice carried notes of genuine concern. Not really an impassive ghost—that was nice, but now she needed to catch her breath.

  "Ih…" she gasped. "Inter… view..."

  "WHAT?"

  Joy bent over, took several long, deep breaths, forcing herself to calm down and compose her thoughts. This was her shot, and she had to make it count. Think calm, cool, and professional.

  Joy straightened back up and stuck out her hand. "Forgive me, but I just realized that we've never been formally introduced. My name is Joy Song Fan, and I'm a freelance reporter working on assignment for the Dodona Gazette. And we'd really appreciate it if you'd agree to sit down for an interview for our paper, to let the public know a bit more about the man behind the mask—let them hear your side of the story. How does that sound?”

  Joy gazed up hopefully into the blank glass circles of his goggles, awaiting his reply. It took longer than she'd have hoped for. He just stood and stared.

  "YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME."

  The filter on the Red Specter’s mask couldn't hide his exasperation. Joy found it interesting that his voice rose about an octave. She pressed on.