Win-win preserves relationships.
Things were easy then. I had power. Now, I’m disposable.
They haven’t completed the job, but I also don’t have access to the Erinas account containing the Spectrals required to pay them for the work. I could, of course, use my personal funds, but that would be madness. I would have to give up more than half of every nibble of Spectrals I’ve struggled for. Death sounds more appealing.
A young girl in her early twenties steps out from a small room I missed at the back of the hangar. She walks toward us, her face a mask of scorn. While shaking her head, she chews on a candy bar, half the wrapper draped over petite hands. Her head is shaved down to the skin, a look only very attractive women can pull off. She does it nicely. She wears a black and gray camouflage pattern long sleeve shirt that hugs her wonderful curves. The militant look is finished with dark cargo pants and combat boots. There is a large revolver on her hip.
She stuffs the last of the chocolate bar into her mouth, making her cheeks bulge like a chipmunk’s while glaring at me. She drops the wrapper on the floor. “What the fuck is this?” she asks while chewing her cud. “I—”
Paragon turns, and while I don’t see her expression, it’s enough to stop the girl’s next words. “Relax, Nightshade. The String is here under my protection.”
Nightshade grunts and crosses her arms under ample breasts.
A lean guy with a mop of strawberry blond hair emerges from behind a stack of crates carrying an armload of rifles. He places them in another crate. He wears brown overalls smudged with grease stains. He has a soft face, like someone you would find working as a smiling doorman and not running with a group of hardened killers. It seems like his eyes are fixed in a state of permanent squinting, like he’s been looking at the details for far too long than is healthy. I presume he’s a mechanic of some capacity. His hands are badly scarred, as if they’d been burned.
“Huh,” the mechanic grunts, looking at me deadpan. I’m not sure why, but my gut responds with distrust. Maybe it’s because he’s better looking than me. Maybe he has an easier time getting into a woman’s underwear with his roughened features.
Despite my gut’s cries of alarm, I must force myself to like all of them. Even if I can’t convince myself, I can at least feign friendliness. Everyone here could end me quite easily, I reason.
The mechanic’s eyes further squint down to slits. He looks through me, and I can see the emptiness in him. I see how he could kill me without any moral qualms. This isn’t my first encounter with Mercs like him. He’s a murder machine not unlike Pink Mohawk. He’s too stupid to know the difference between when to run or when to fight. He always fights. He needs his crew to keep him alive. But when they need him, they let the Pit Bull out of his cage.
And that’s where Strings come into the picture. We play at being the Alphas, but secretly we know our place. As long as we keep up the ruse, the game carries onward. This works well with Mercs with a rational mind. We’re both merely conducting a business transaction.
The mechanic is still glowering at me, and I’m tempted to remind him of who I am and where I stand in the social hierarchy. They don’t respond to anything else. Social aggression, however, is a risk. He may just raise one of those rifles and put a few slugs through my chest to knock me off the pedestal. I hate, and I love these guys. They’re the best at what they do, but they’re a double-edged sword.
“Someone planning to fuck this guy?” the mechanic asks, his hard expression shattering into a sly smile.
Paragon emits a sigh combined with a groan. “This is our String for the Wolf Microsystems gig.”
“Isn’t it great having him here?” Saber says to Paragon. This idea might’ve been a lethal mistake.
“Why though?” Nightshade asks with a flick of her wrist.
“String?” Paragon beckons for me to fill in the shameful answer. I have a feeling they already know what happened. If I were Paragon or Saber, I would’ve relayed my story to the team and gave warning of my arrival. Are they fucking with me?
Nightshade stifles a giggle, and the mechanic emits a breathy snicker.
I resist the urge to raise my arm in a limp wave while I introduce myself. “Desmond Pomar. I presume you know about my predicament then?”
“It’s true then? Your own company tried to end you?” Nightshade throws her head back in a burst of sonorous laughter that bounces from the steel walls. “Oh man, you’re so fucked!” Now she’s pointing at me.
I sheepishly nod both to myself and to her. She’s right. I tell myself this is part of the humility card.
“I apologize on behalf of Nightshade, Desmond. She’s our best hacker. The man in stained overalls, as you have may guessed, is Talos, our mechanic and gunsmith. He’s good at using them too.” Paragon grins, turning to face me with a hand on her hip. One leg slides out of the cut of her dress. My eyes are drawn to the majority of her exposed thigh, but like an adult, I meet her gaze. She regards me for a long moment. She speaks to me, but her words are for the crew. “We have to think at the macro level. This is an opportunity for us.”
Nightshade’s laughter dies down. Talos leans his hands over a crate’s edge and furrows his brow.
Saber nods to Talos. “Let’s finish getting those explosives ready.” The mechanic cracks his knuckles and the two stalk off into a maze of crates.
Paragon approaches Nightshade’s side and places a hand on her shoulder, guiding her toward me. “Nightshade, you’ll be working with the String.”
Nightshade eyes me with blatant disgust. She flicks her eyes to Paragon with a ‘this idiot?’ look.
“Go on,” Paragon says while making for the makeshift bedroom. Their relationship strikes me as very mother-daughter.
“Fine.” Nightshade lets out a resolute huff.
8
Visitor
Nightshade’s eyes settle on me, a piercing blue like an Icelandic lagoon. She drags herself into a chair at the enormous table and gestures for me to join at a seat across from her. She pulls a protein bar from her pocket and starts to slowly eat it. I remember that everything is a game. I meet her stare. I am a stone that nuclear bombs can’t mar. I am the black depths of the ocean’s bottom.
She’s pretty up close. Far prettier than I first thought. She possesses both the arrogance and ignorance of youth. I pity her. I remember when I was this stupid. I watch how her jaw muscles flex and bulge while she eats. I watch the curve of her throat bulge as she swallows. She finishes her snack with the vestige of a burp pushed through her nostrils. I raise an eyebrow, but she doesn’t excuse herself. Instead, she asks, “So what did you do?”
“Your meaning exactly?” I prompt with a curt smile.
She raises her eyebrows as if she’s conversing with a fool. “To make your employer hate you.”
She is a child in my world, but I have to treat her like an adult if I want her and the rest of the team to help me. This is delicate. I have to restrain myself from destroying her.
“We’ve had some issues, I admit. I’m hoping you and your crew can help me. I’ll find a way to make it worth your time.”
“An honorable String. I never thought I’d meet such a creature,” Nightshade sneers, drawing my eyes to her plump, heart shaped lips. She throws a lithe arm across the back of her chair, twisting her body and shifting narrowed eyes beyond me.
I need her skills, and the path to them is through her empathy. I hesitate, my mouth hanging intentionally open. “This… this isn’t easy for me to admit.” I peer into my hands set on my lap.
“Mhm,” she says in a mocking snicker. She crosses her arms, shifting her body square to mine. Nightshade starts to speak when Paragon sweeps by the table, turning to give her a full smile.
Paragon grins and nods back. “Be nice to the String,” Paragon tells her. It’s polite, but no doubt an order. “Give us a moment, I need to talk to Desmond about something.”
“Gladly,” Nightshade says as she rises from he
r chair. She strides away without sparing me a second glance, but waves at Paragon. Paragon says something to Nightshade in a type of Spanish I’ve never heard. There are too many languages now. Many are so recently fabricated so that they can’t yet be interpreted by someone’s AR. It’s only a matter of time until the programs are updated. Secrets don’t last in this world.
I work my lips in puzzlement, brows creasing. Paragon takes Nightshade’s former seat.
“Something amiss?” Paragon asks.
“What language are you using? Think I’ve heard everyone in your crew using it now.”
Paragon gives me a hard look, but then her features soften. “What will you do for me if I told you?”
I grin because she is teasing me. Her walls are lowered, and now I have a way in. “You couldn’t handle it.”
She leans over the table. Her strip of dark hair falls in cascades to frame her impeccable skin. “Is that so, Desmond?” Her voice is a sultry rasp. I want to squirm, but master myself. “We call it Acan, a derivative we created from ancient Latin.”
“I see. Thought it sounded familiar.”
“You speak Old Latin?” Her jaw falls open and her eyes narrow.
“No.” I shake my head. “Just recognize some of the intonations. I grew up in Mexico. No one taught anything but English there, but some of the country stalwarts still spoke Spanish. I recognize the occasional word.”
“Hm.” She nods and offers nothing. We stare into each other’s eyes for a long few seconds. “I heard there were fanatics there.”
I huff out a breath with a reminiscent smile. “Yes, there were, or still are, I think. We grew up in a small village called Windrip. Village life was easy until I was ten. Not too long after the bombs, the zealots found their way to us, threatened to drive us out unless we followed their senseless religion. My parents objected, believing in the world’s acceptance of god’s death. Where is god in nuclear war? Laughing.” I snicker. “I’ll spare you the details, but they never complied and were killed. I managed to escape, hitchhiked on autotrucks on their way to Chicago. Well, the rest is pretty ugly too.”
All of it is true, and I wonder if my admission is a tool to be used against me. I have to remember that Paragon is a Merc, a killer, and my employee. What I think might be brewing between us could never be. I am simply a gateway to Spectrals. She’ll use me and throw me away like spent brass.
“Why Chicago?” She tilts her head. I see the scar on the side of her neck where her AR was implanted, a raised disc of white tissue.
“It’s all everyone in Windrip ever talked about. It’s where the money is. ‘We’ll get to Chicago one day,’ my dad always said.” I pause and lean back in my chair. I watch as Paragon mirrors me. Is this a manipulation? I stuff the idea down and continue. “Some of the farmers made their own chems and sold them through the cartels. They’d come back from the States six months later with new clothing and cars. They were fucking kings, for a time.”
Paragon gives me a contemplative smile. I hope what I’ve shared is enough to garner some emotional value. She seems like she has a good heart. The more she knows about me, the more she’ll trust and hopefully help me. I’ve pried myself open too much for someone in my profession. My innards are ripe for scavenging.
To seal our budding trust, I need more than the superficial from her. There’s more than her trust at stake. I also need intel because I want to complete my job, despite my employer’s betrayal. Like a battered woman, I think if I’m just a little better, I can regain Erinas’ love and find where I went wrong.
I lower my chin and peer into Paragon’s eyes. “Where did you grow up?”
Her lips stretch into an amused smile as if my intentions are plain. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” She licks her teeth.
“I would.”
There’s a jingling to my right. My eyes are drawn as two figures stride from the shadows born of crates and into the light cast over the table.
Saber and Talos stop at the short side of the table’s edge. They’re armed for war. Talos scowls at me, and Saber is clearly pissed. Both are wearing heavy combat jackets, the pockets bulging with extra magazines. There are pistols on their belts, rifles with tactical straps slung over shoulders. Saber has two big knives in his chest pockets. The handle of a Wakizashi protrudes from Talos’ back.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Saber’s eyes whir and buzz as they take me in. “Stand up,” he says in a loud and authoritative voice.
I stand and spread my arms. “What? What’s wrong?” My heart hammers against my temples.
He marches toward me. “Fucking String is bugged,” he barks at Paragon.
“Shit!” Paragon hisses, eyes going wide as she leaps from her chair. “What have you done, Desmond?”
“I don’t know! What? How?” Saber runs his hands down the side of my torso, delicately probing at my skin. The hardened polycarbonate lenses of his mechanical eyes flex and shimmer to the shade of violet light.
“You said he didn’t hit you. But he did, you just didn’t feel it. He shot you with a fucking tracker.” Saber grunts. “Found it.”
He produces something chrome and bright from a holster. It looks part gun and part tool for taking a core sample. Where the barrel of a gun would be is a transparent cylinder, at its proximal end is what appears to be a spring loaded plunger.
“Wait. What the fuck do you think you’re going to do with that?” I try to pull away, but Saber easily holds me like a struggling baby with his cyberarms. I try to wiggle and yank my arm out of his grasp.
“Stay still. Stop fucking moving, idiot.”
“No. Wait. You—” Saber squeezes my elbow, cutting off my words with a whimper. “Fucker!” I growl, finally relenting to his control.
“Good String,” he breathes, arm hissing as it smoothly tracks the extraction gun at my back. He homes in on the device my biological eyes can’t detect.
“Are you sure there’s—”
“Shut up, you…” Something snaps and thumps. “There!”
It feels like a ball of lava erupts at my side. I throw my head back in a cry of agony. The muscles in my neck lock down, and I can’t get a proper breath. I double over, and Saber releases me as I crumple. The contents of my stomach are forced into my chest and up my throat. I force it back down with a mountain of will. I stay there on my hands and knees.
“Going to puke?” Saber asks, bending down a few feet ahead of me.
I nod and catch a towel Talos tosses me, then wipe spittle from my face. I see Paragon watching and give her a helpless shrug. She comes around to my side and presses a square emergency trauma bandage on my wound. I breathe a sigh of relief as the pain numbing agents go to work. I can once again think.
“Suro is coming for you, friend.” Saber clicks his tongue a few times. He raises the extraction gun to my eyes. Within the glass cylinder is what appears to be a mechanical eel with the thickness of a pencil but half of its length. It writhes against its prison. Its head is a tripod of talons that scrape at the glass, leaving bloody streaks. My blood. My head feels light. Its tail is a miniature circular saw blade that starts buzzing against the cylinder.
“Tenacious little bastard, aren’t you?” Saber snickers then presses a button on the gun. A surge of electricity arcs around its body and makes it go limp.
I reach for the gun, and Saber lets me have it. There is a white slice where its tail started cutting an escape route. Its body is made of a dozen segments, all slicked in scarlet and what I think might be my shredded skin. “My nanos. Why didn’t they stop it?”
“Think, String, think.” Saber taps me on the side of my head with his alloyed index finger.
I frown, grasping at nothing. “It neutralizes them somehow? Avoids detection?”
“Quadware makes these,” Paragon says.
“The same company who made my nanos,” I say in recognition. “They must be programmed to ignore each other.”
“That is the prevailin
g theory,” Talos adds, one hand rubbing the hilt of his sword as if itching to use it. “This is definitely Suro’s work. He’s done a lot of work for Quadware, maybe they hooked him up with their tech.”
“How do you know?” I blurt, all self-control lost. Talos and Suro likely know each other. Don’t all psycho assholes? Maybe they’re old drinking buddies. I can picture them laughing over a beer as Suro recounts how he chased me into traffic.
“He’ll be here soon, you should get ready.” Saber smiles at me as if he’s pleased by this discovery.
It feels like a vice has clamped down on my insides and is trying to drag them up through my throat. I shake my head at him, unsure of what is expected of me. I hope he doesn’t expect me to fight. “And what?” I wince at the quiver in my voice.
I can’t believe how naïve I’ve been. Suro didn’t let me go because I had wounded him. He let me go because it was intentional. He could’ve ended me at any time. As far as I know, he could’ve been watching me cower from the gangers in that shit stained alley.
My mind reels through burgeoning questions. Did he want to know who I hired? Could this crew handle him? Does he have a backup? Should I be running? Ask for a weapon?
Fuck.
I swallow hard and look to Paragon for a guiding light.
She winks at me, then draws a Ruger pistol with a high capacity mag from deep within her kimono, the muzzle aimed at the floor. She releases the safety with a soft click and keeps her index finger against the weapon’s frame. I can feel my eyes ridiculously bulge. I really don’t want to be in another gunfight. “What’s the plan?”
Saber slides his rifle stock under his armpit. “I thought you were supposed to have a brain. Isn’t that how you Strings survive? We’re going to kill the idiot.”
“Suro’s not the brightest node in the Net. He looks to be coming alone, maybe thinking you’re hiding out here,” Paragon adds.
I hate to ask the question, but I need to know. “How?”
Nightshade emerges from the shadows, her form masked by a heavy combat vest and a modified MP5 sub-machine gun raised to the ceiling. She gives me a half smile. “Thanks, String. Needed something to alleviate the boredom of this job.”
Backstab (Worlds of Deception Book 1) Page 8
