The Bloodlust: (Volume Three of the Virion Series)

by R. L. M. Sanchez

  11

  DILLON: THE INFILTRATOR PART II

  My graduation as an Infiltrator was lackluster. Something you wouldn’t expect. No medal, no pin, no celebration. The secrecy of any Interpol officer’s ties to Infiltration was very serious. And I was completely fine with it. I couldn’t stand being congratulated on something that required such pain to accomplish. The only real praise I received was from my father, but in no large capacity, for he understood what I went through, at least to some capacity.

  Everyone in Interpol London and Freedom knew who Liam Roberts was. He was the kind you’d put on recruitment posters or the kind a drill sergeant would reference to his own recruits. Dad had walked the beat, been a Strike officer, served in Purgatory Tower, led a chief position in operations, and even served as a liaison to the ENF. He could have been Operations Chief if he wanted, but he chose to step down from a liaison to Sector Captain, an effort to stay close to his Enforcers in the streets. He was one of what we called the “old breed of coppers”. He believed in the eternal good fight to keep the streets clean and the citizens safe. At least he acknowledged the struggle within that. That was always his message. No matter how impossible things became, us coppers were the first and last defense against a city ready to consume everything just and righteous. While that may seem foolish given everything I’ve seen, it was that same mentality that had kept Interpol alive and above water. Something I never cared to realize very often was the everlasting difference between me and Caine.

  Before I went into training, Caine was on track to start the academy. But something changed in his plans and now he was studying at New Haven on an Interpol scholarship. It felt strange talking to him after I found that out; he felt like a different person. But when I thought about it, he was. He wasn’t my little brother anymore. I was both proud and disappointed. I was proud of where we’d come from and what we’d become. But, he decided to follow a different path than me.

  He apologized for the way he acted before I went in. It meant a lot to me. I could tell he looked up to me, a fuzzy feeling to a bigger brother. He always kept his pendant around his neck. I wanted to be the thing that he looked up to. But I didn’t know what it was. A good cop? A guardian? Or maybe just a brother. Being a cop in Freedom would hamper my attempt at any of those.

  When I received my first assignment, I was filled with anxiety as well as excitement. I wouldn’t see anyone I cared about for months if not years, only the shadows. Dad congratulated me but didn’t say much to me. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t good enough for his standards. Living up to the Sector Captain of Orange Sector was a tall request. It was a heavy feeling saying goodbye to him, knowing it may be the last time I did so. He felt the same, and it was why he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He simply wasn’t ready.

  Wargame’s gang was a rising threat post-war. First formed in the weeks following the Solar War’s end, it was rising in strength and following with many young gangers flocking to it. It promised reward through tribute as many gangs did. And the brutish and war-mongering tactics that Wargame employed were very effective. During the war, many of the gangs in Red Sector were left un-surveyed and intelligence on gang activities had dwindled. Interpol had catching up to do and one of the more successful gangs was quickly rising in power. The assignment was simple, although incredibly daunting. Kill two prominent Wargame lieutenants, Click and Chaser, and gather any intelligence regarding the gang’s numbers and mobilization capabilities. It was the assignment that would guarantee the man I was to become.

  I was far into Red Sector, well into the Northern Grids, just outside of the Promised Land. A recent rain up top had water running off the buildings. The humidity that followed was less than desirable. Wargame’s thugs were everywhere; they completed dominated Grid Twenty-One, my area of operation. The street was congested with makeshift barriers with Wargame gunners behind them. Barbed wire wooden fences funneled travelers into bottlenecks should opposing gangs attack, and numerous checkpoints would shake you down the deeper into territory you went. One such checkpoint guard looked at me as he did many times before, my colors and gear directly reflecting Wargame’s gang. He waved his arm past him towards a nearby alley, a small waterfall of run-off flowing over it. I was clear to enter.

  I walked down the alley, cluttered with the Lost and many of Wargame’s blokes, standing around almost like bouncers. They weren’t the typical conscripts you’d find patrolling the streets, rather the Home-Guards, the ultra-elite killers trusted with organizing and executing the safety of the territory and rumored to be trained by Wargame himself. Trained to spot and flay and dismember spies and Infiltrators. Infiltrators just like me. This close to Wargame’s homeland, you needed the best to protect it. Even I was nervous walking past them.

  But why would I be? It was 2465 now. I had been undercover for almost four years. The Solar War had ended already, but such events were distant enough to where I couldn’t have given a shit. It was another world down in Red Sector, a place constantly at war with itself. Even after being one of them for so long, no matter how seamless I was and how perfectly I played into their mannerisms, there was always a fear inside me. Would they ever see through me? Would some guard notice a slight twitch in my eyelid and get suspicious? One of the Home-Guards nodded at me.

  “Blitz,” he grumbled before turning his attention to others in the crowded alley. In reality, outside of my own fears, no one was the wiser.

  You could say my reputation as Blitz preceded me. My whole cover was a blend of truth and lie. Perfect for losing oneself in the character they were to play. My lineage could be traced to London, and one veteran Wargame ganger even vouched for me as I knew everything there was to know about Mercy’s Mongrels, things not even a copper could know. Ironic. The rest was a life I made up living in Freedom’s undercity. I used my experiences in New Prague as my backstory, minus the actual location. It was genuine enough to be believable.

  I came onto Wargame’s crew by entering some of the minor street races. It was easy to rise in ranks before other gangs started noticing my potential and an easy way to make credits. A Wargame lieutenant by the name of Shifter recruited me on, first smaller racers then onto big credit sprints, the kind that induced small wars from losing. Being a champion of the races, Shifter had no doubt in his mind that I could move onto much riskier operations. Hijacking supply caravans from Hasker as a wheelman became my next task, then Lieutenant escorts. Naturally, many lieutenants wanted me as their wheelman for their tasks, clearly seeing I was the best. This, of course, got me very close to some very important targets, one including Chaser, one of my targets.

  Chaser was top boss for smuggling, second to Click as head of smuggling for the entire Wargame operation. Chaser was a thin man, aged to a healthy year, almost fifty, a long life for a ganger. His mohawk was mostly gray, clear sign of his wisdom. Supplies from Dark Market dealers had been plagued by Interpol ambushes for months and no one could determine why, considering the always-varying route patterns. Chaser seemed to think someone was tipping Interpol off, and right he was.

  Truth was, it was me and various other Infiltrators, which not even I was aware of, tipping off Marshals working in conjunction with the Infiltrators. But Chaser was none the wiser. We met in a warehouse with Dark Market soldiers, low tiered guys wanting to know why their shipments weren’t making it to their destinations. Even though once the product had left their hands, it wasn’t their concern, it was beginning to harm their reputation. One would think twice about buying from the Dark Market if their shipments couldn’t get where they were going. Tensions were already high and Chaser suspected everyone except his own. I was able to get a Marshal to intervene and start a firefight discreetly. Bullets flew in every direction; bodies from both sides dropped and the Marshal was never to be seen again. During the calamity, I shot Chaser straight through the breather. One of ours saw, so I shot him too. I was able to escape intact.

  When I arrived back to base without Chaser,
I was met with mixed hostility. Had I been a normal chauffeur, I’d have been killed. Chieftain Ricketts was the senior War Chief, second only to Wargame himself. He demanded answers. It took careful details to convince him that Chaser himself had been tipping off Interpol in exchange for immunity and even credits. Wargame gangers were motivated by mutilation and heinous actions, so when I arrived with Chaser’s head in a bloody canvas sack, it smoothed things over. I made the damndest suggestion that I was the new Boss of Smuggling for the Wargame operation and that I’d stop the losses and do a better job than the gray mohawk ever did. Ricketts agreed.

  And there I was, Boss of Smuggling, knocking on the door of an operations house that only the highest Chiefs and Lieutenants were privileged. All the Home-Guards completely accepted me as their own. It gave me confidence while I was already living in fear. But after Chaser’s death, the Chiefs grew cautious and outright paranoid. It was the first major betrayal by a senior member in the gang’s history. What I saw next would only prove that.

  As I looked to either guard by the door, I heard screaming from the other side. Muffled and loud, like someone was trying to stop them from doing so. Sadly, I knew the type too well being in the company of madmen. It was a tortuous shriek until the screaming finally stopped. The guards chuckled.

  “Got a lot of fight, that one,” the guard on the left said while the other merely smiled and shook his head. They nodded and let me in.

  As I walked through the door opened by the guard, I saw Shifter to the far left of the room, monitoring some maps and terminals. And a War Chief standing over a table in the middle of the room with a body laid out over it, or what remained of one. Blood was everywhere. Dripping onto the floors, splattered on the War Chief. The Chief was hacking it apart like a large cut of meat into several sections. Several machetes were pierced into the slabs of meat to prevent them from slipping off the wobbling wooden table. I didn’t wince at any of it; I couldn’t. Right on the other side of the table, a naked operations boss was strapped with barbed wire to an old and rusty steel chair. It was nothing new or surprising. He was unconscious for the moment, otherwise he’d still be in considerable pain. Light work was done to him first. Cuts on his body, bruises all over his face. Then fingers were cut, all of them, in fact. Toes as well. Teeth were smashed out by a bloodstained iron mallet on the table. Most importantly, I knew the man. He was a Security Boss, Sphynx, in charge of guard rotations, protection, and escorts for the War Chiefs. Covering bases by killing one of your own that you suspected happened, but low-level men, either conscripts or lieutenants. Never had I seen the loyal bosses on the other side of it. It made me begin to worry.

  Shifter nudged my shoulder.

  “Caught the little bastard on the table making a call,” Shifter said. “Talkin’ like a normal bloke, a smart bloke from topside.”

  The man on the table was a trusted boss of training for years, with far more reputation than me.

  “He’s a copper, I knows it,” the Chief said in shallow breaths, tired by the constant hacking. “Them coppers have a chip inside them, a tracker. After seeing his friend here go through a grinder, this pooch will talk!” He tapped the flat end of the cleaver on the bound man’s head.

  The Chief wasn’t wrong. While not an outright tracker device, all Infiltrators had a micro-implant inside our skull which allowed us to communicate to the outside. Even hacking apart the body like the Chief was doing, it’d be almost impossible to locate without proper equipment. But how they discovered that information was beyond me.

  Most importantly, it made me wonder if the mess on the table was actually another Infiltrator. I wasn’t privy to such information. My hand twitched again. It hadn’t done so in a long time.

  “Over here, Blitz, something you need to see,” Shifter said. I didn’t hesitate and walked over to him by a mess of cables and terminals.

  “How can we be confident that Interpol has infiltrated as high as the bosses?” I said, desperately trying to see how much they knew.

  “Can’t be. But some brokers seem to think so.”

  “Hasker’s?”

  “The Lost King and his. Hasker don’t deal with us much. I think he’s scared of how fast we’re spreadin’.”

  While there were several broker operations in the undercities of the Solar System, none were quite as renowned as Hasker’s Syndicate. He provided the best information and it was almost entirely accurate. Many other brokers, like The Lost King’s for example, paled in comparison.

  “Can we trust the whispers of the bloody Lost as reliable while we hack apart some of our most trusted bosses?”

  “Can’t trust no one these days, my son, but Wargame knows his loyal dogs. Gotta keep your fangs sharp.”

  Just as I suspected, the evidence wasn’t solid. Click, Ricketts, and Wargame were all paranoid.

  I looked to the maps above us, one being an operations map. It contained locations of Wargame bases throughout Red Sector, including a push into the Promised Land. Wargame wanted the breatherless land, and fast.

  “Sure have grown, haven’t we?” Shifter said as he saw me staring at the map.

  “When was anyone gonna tell me about new sites?” I hissed. “It’s getting bloody hard jumbling my caravan’s routes. This could’ve helped tons, you prick!”

  “Sorry, my man, some of this stuff I can’t even get on time. But Click wants to meet with all of us to go over the next push. We’re goin’ into the Promised Land, my brotha.”

  “The Dark Market owns Promised Land—”

  “Not for long. We’re at strength now, and it needs to be done now.”

  “Well, alright. The Promised Land it is,” I smiled. I embraced Shifter after I got the meeting details. I was close now. My own freedom was in sight. As I turned to exit the building, the man on the chair began screaming again as he became conscious. It was a different scream now that I heard it up close. A scream of a broken man. He looked at me, tears rolling down his puffy and bruised face. The Chief, frustrated that he couldn’t find the device he was looking for in the body, snapped when his concentration was broken from the sudden screaming. He violently grabbed the cleaver and swung it behind him, slicing open the poor bastard’s neck. Blood shot out of the large slit and all I heard was gurgling and wet coughing before I walked out.

  Later that night, when I was safe inside my quarters, I vomited right as I took off my breather. My arms and hands were trembling. After stumbling to the bathroom, I splashed myself with water from the faucet. Looking in the mirror, I saw someone hardly recognizable. I wasn’t a role model for Caine. I wasn’t a fine example of an Enforcer. I was a detestable human-fucking-being. I got in the shower and activated my implanted OPIaA, only read from behind the iris. The hot shower muffled the signal enough to be mistaken for other inconspicuous signals. I immediately contacted my handler and my only allowable contact to my other life. To contact anyone else was entirely possible, but it meant their life, or mine. Or both.

  “Knight to Castle One-Zero, come in,” I said, the words barely trembling out.

  “Signal clear. Go ahead, Knight.”

  “Knight requesting data drop on Wargame Boss Sphynx, anything you have.” The poor bastard at the operations house was on my mind, burning its way through my eyes constantly. After a pause, my calm handler replied.

  “Knight, negative on your last—”

  “Castle One-Zero, fuck yourself silly! I don’t know what counter-intelligence they’re playing with now. They’re hitting Brokers and looking high up now, bosses included.” Every undercover’s identity was secret to most, even to other Infiltrators. Another pause and my handler yielded, anything to help me keep my composure.

  “Knight, I suggest you calm down.” I paused for a moment and just tried to focus on breathing. “Boss Sphynx…” he mumbled.

  The data began popping up in my feed. Pictures of the ganger boss appeared on screen, profile shots of his face, no more common than a typical ganger. No doubt the same man tort
ured. And then his Interpol records appeared, including academy graduation photos, still in his uniform: Enforcer Alonso. I’m sure he didn’t figure how his life would come to such a pitiful end. Simply fucking meat now.

  “Jesus Christ…” I mumbled as I slumped to the tile in the shower, the water hitting my face harshly.

  “He was a good man, Knight.”

  “And now he’s fucking dead. And no one will hear about it.” I thought about all the interactions I had with Enforcer Alonso, or rather Boss Sphynx. He was quiet and loyal to Wargame. And he always stared at me strangely. Almost as if he knew who I was. Thinking about it, I’m shocked I didn’t know by looking at him.

  “You and he have brought us valuable intelligence that is detrimental to Wargame’s operation, invaluable data.”

  “No. No, no, I need out right now. I can’t keep myself from cracking up anymore. I need you to pull me out. Tonight. They’re rounding up Bosses and they’re getting lucky. Swinging an axe that high on the tree, how long do you think I’ll last?!”

  “Negative, Knight.”

  “Bloody negative? Click is having chaps skinned, flayed, chopped into pieces—”

  “And no one suspects you. The Chiefs trust you more than anyone, reports from other Infiltrators prove this. If you only realized that, you could glide through this. Remember your training, Infiltrator.”

  “I know if I say the wrong thing, look at Click or Ricketts funny, it’s going to be me next. I fucking know it!”

  “Knight, it’s not the news I want to give you, but I can’t pull you out tonight. Truth is, Alonso was activated to be your standby. He was going to pull you out when your mission was completed. It’ll take time to put something else together.”

  “How fucking long?!”

  “Two days. Maybe three. Doing anything hasty would not only blow your own cover, but several other deep cover Infiltrators as well. You’ve only your remaining HVT. Can you complete your mission?”