Hearts of Darkness

by Andrea Speed

  It was a bit more frantic when they entered the plant, as there were more henchmen, maybe a dozen, although they were caught off guard by strangers entering their domain. Ash laid down some suppressing fire that made them scatter as Kaede came up and joined him.

  The light level in the plant was very low, low enough that they probably hadn’t needed to take off their night-vision goggles, but it seemed like it was for the best. Ash and Kaede both retreated to cover behind a stack of ominously labeled crates—the words were in no language Kaede could read, but he recognized the hazardous-material stickers—while the henchmen fired back with live ammo, taking whatever cover they could. But most had already been hit with the drug pellets, so it was just a waiting game.

  Slivers of wood kicked up in their faces as the bullets hit the crates, and Kaede had to lean in and ask, “How many did you get?”

  “I’m uncertain, but I believe 85 percent at least.”

  Kaede wished he was that certain about anything, especially a percentage of lackeys shot. If he didn’t know Ash wasn’t a liar, he’d accuse him of making that up.

  They fired back blindly, but only to keep the henchmen from charging, and as it was, they didn’t have to wait long. The number of returned shots dropped precipitously, until there were just three people shooting back at them.

  “Cover me,” Ash said before leaning out and taking aim. Kaede fired blindly, and Ash sniped the remaining three henchmen with a coolness that was enviable.

  “How good is your eyesight?” Kaede asked as soon as Ash was back behind the crate.

  Ash shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I’ve been told it’s well above average.”

  “That could be said of everything you do.”

  He shrugged again. “The people who built me knew what they were doing.”

  That they did. Who knew there was a basic template for supersoldier? Oh, and who knew they’d bother to make him attractive? Although Ash was so pale and ghostly, his attractiveness was kind of offbeat. But Kaede thought he was gorgeous.

  “What… what did you shoot us…” was as far as one of the henchmen got before he collapsed, his gun making a clattering noise as it bounced across the floor.

  Once the lackeys were all down, Kaede and Ash found the exit and continued on through the plant. Kaede couldn’t help but grin to himself. Sure, they were generally invincible, but the Veil was hardly even putting up a fight. The Hand really needed to look into her hiring practices.

  The main corridor was weirdly empty. He and Ash were expecting a fight, especially since everyone must have heard the shootout, but maybe they’d run off or decided to form a more intimate defense barrier around their leader.

  Ash paused at the head of the hall and said, “I don’t like this. It must be a trap.”

  Kaede shrugged. “So what? It’s not like they have anything we can’t deal with.” Kaede raised his drug gun and ventured into the hall, waiting for the first sacrificial asshole to show his face. Ash sighed but followed him.

  And that’s when the roof fell in.

  Actually, in retrospect, there was a blast, but for some reason Kaede felt it more than heard it. The shockwave was like an invisible fist to the chest, and as he was falling, so was the ceiling. He had no time to react, but somehow Ash did, grabbing him and covering him as the weight of the tiles crashed down upon them.

  Kaede blacked out for a second or two but came to with a feeling of weight upon him. The symtech suits kept them mostly intact, but he had a fierce ache in his ribs, and he suspected a couple were at least cracked, if not broken. His ears were ringing too, although he was starting to hear things. Mainly the shifting of rubble, but he thought he was hearing words too. He reached out in the dark and touched Ash’s arm, and Ash squeezed his hand to let him know he was still alive and okay.

  Slowly the high-pitched noise in his ears gave way to words. “—fool? I know who you are, Hayashi, and I really thought you were smarter than this. You and your manservant coming alone. Should I be insulted?”

  Ash kicked a hole in the rubble, letting some light in, and Kaede shifted some of the pile over his head. It was Black Hand’s heavily synthesized voice, coming through a loudspeaker. Kaede tasted blood and dust in his mouth and realized he should have guessed she’d be in a whole explosives mindset, since she’d just used some to take down Moreau’s building.

  Kaede stuck his head through the detritus and realized it wasn’t that deep. Deep enough to bury the two of them, sure, but just barely. The main structure still seemed to be intact as well. What the hell had they done, rigged a false ceiling? Seemed like a lot of work for a booby trap.

  “Congratulations, Joy. You’re smarter than all the heroes of this town. Of course, that’s not hard.” He pushed rubble off himself until he could stand. Ash did the same thing, only twice as fast.

  Members of the Veil were waiting for them down at the end of the corridor, in a safe, sheltered place, holding big guns. Ash held up his hands and dropped his gun before approaching slowly.

  “Stay right there,” one of them ordered. Hard to tell which, since they were all wearing those stupid hoods.

  But Ash stopped close to them—too close, really—and if they thought of him as anything but a “manservant,” maybe they’d have realized the danger they were in. But they didn’t, not until it was too late.

  Ash moved so fast it was hard to see. He punched one of them in the throat, and when that guy crumpled, the others noticed and raised their weapons. Ash grabbed a gun barrel and aimed it toward another Veil member, so when he reflexively pulled the trigger, he accidentally blew the head off one of his friends. Ash also kicked one so hard his leg broke with an audible snap, and dropped him screaming to the floor. At the same time, he shoved the gun back into the other’s face hard enough to break both the man’s nose and the gun butt. There was a single gunman still standing as he had been behind the others, and Ash looked at him while he snapped the broken gun in half. The henchman did the sensible thing. He dropped his gun and ran.

  Kaede held himself upright under his own power, but it hurt like fuck. He had indeed cracked a couple of ribs, and just breathing caused a pain in his side, but he felt like he couldn’t complain in front of Ash, because Ash had had so much worse. Hell, had he not taken a fall from a ten-story building just the other night? So Kaede had to suck it up and not be a wimp, even though his head was throbbing now. Might have to use some of those nanobots on himself when they got home.

  Ash looked back at him, concern creasing his face even as blood trickled down from a cut on his scalp. “Are you okay?”

  Kaede waved his hand dismissively, leaning against the wall. “Fine. Let’s keep going.”

  Ash seemed suspicious, especially since it took Kaede a moment to find his balance, but he picked up an unbroken gun and continued on, and Kaede managed to stumble after him. He’d dropped one of his drug guns, but he had another one, so that was good. He didn’t think he’d find the other one in all this rubble.

  Ash used the henchman’s gun to fire into the next corridor. While Kaede briefly wondered about it, he saw the reason for it when explosives in the wall and floor erupted, dropping even more detritus in the hall. Cool. So that was her whole plan of defense: explosives. Well, it did suck, he had to give her that.

  “Well, if you do one thing well, might as well go with it all the time,” he said aloud, although he was aware it was hard to shame a villain, especially a crazy one.

  Ash shrugged. “It does get repetitive. I appreciate traps with more variety.”

  “What is wrong with the two of you?” Hand erupted over the intercom. “I’m trying to fucking kill you!”

  “Yeah, we got that,” Kaede replied. “We’re just not impressed.” She made a disbelieving noise, but Kaede continued. “Look, why don’t we talk, huh? I mean, you can keep trying to blow us up, and we can keep disabling your henchmen, but I think we should have a discussion like civilized villains. Especially since I’m the only one not
sexist enough to be fooled by the gender swap. I think we may have similar goals.”

  “Oh really? What are your goals, Hayashi?”

  “Rid this town of so many damn capes. Sound familiar?”

  She was quiet for several more seconds, allowing them to hear the noise of the plant continuing to settle after several detonations within its skin. Finally, she said, “Fine. But you drop your weapons and your sidekick at the door.”

  Ash shook his head, but Kaede said, “Fine. But your henchmen have to back off and drop their weapons.”

  “What henchmen? I think I’ve got eight left, and they’re hiding, the cowards.”

  He had no reason to disbelieve that. In fact, it made perfect sense. They’d put a lot of them down, and Ash had killed about a half dozen. The remaining numbers had to be thin.

  “I don’t like this,” Ash whispered, as they followed her directions to her office.

  “I know. But I’ll be okay. Just keep an ear out and be ready.” At least he hoped he’d be okay. His head was still hurting, although not as much as his ribs. Hurt ribs were such a bitch too. He put a hand inside his jacket and loosened the cap on the neurotoxin bottle.

  Once he dropped his gun and showed his empty hands, the door slid back, appearing miraculously in a segment of the wall, and Kaede stepped inside what turned out to be a kind of corner office. Only it was a corner office for a crazy mad-scientist villain.

  So instead of a desk, there were a few tables, one with nothing but buttons, switches, and built-in monitors, another with nothing but beakers and test tubes. Hand, aka Joy, was standing behind that one, still wearing her white hood with the black handprint in the center and the shapeless matching tunic. The design was tacky, sure, but now he understood it. The garment hid a multitude of sins, and the terrible design made you not want to look at it for long. It was so genius that, really, you had to give it up to her. She always knew what she was doing. Kaede heard the door seal behind him but knew better than to acknowledge it. “Wanna take off the hood? I know what you look like, Joy. I could even tell you your Social Security number, if you’ve forgotten it.”

  “Don’t get cocky, kid,” she warned, her voice modulator still on Darth Vader’s elderly uncle. But she did reach up and pull off the hood, at the same time switching something off. She looked like she did in the last known photograph of Joy, like a woman in her late thirties, with messy brown hair and surprisingly hard brown eyes. She was the kind of person who always seemed to be looking at something she didn’t like. “Although I guess you have the right to. You haven’t even been in town a week, and you’ve figured out the identity that’s bedeviled Dark Justice and all the rest of his idiot parade for a decade. And you’ve been killing a fuckload of people. It looks for all the world like you’re taking over the criminal underworld.”

  “I have no interest in the criminal underworld of this or any city. If I wanted to rule people, I simply would. The very idea bores me to tears.”

  “Really? So why is Snow dead?”

  “Because he took something from my father. Everyone who’s died has taken something from him. Have you taken something, Doctor?” She had a PhD. Might as well call her that.

  She snickered, clearly unconcerned. “No. And you know I haven’t. So why are you here? Besides being Dark Justice’s little bitch.”

  “It’s hard not to take an assassination attempt personally.”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “When the hell did I try and assassinate you?”

  “The first time I set foot in this town. And again when you brought down the Moreau Building.”

  “First of all, the former was just a warning, which you didn’t take, and you weren’t even the target of the latter.”

  “But my death would have been a neat perk, wouldn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “Wouldn’t have shed a tear, no. But all’s fair in love and war, right?”

  Kaede raised an eyebrow at that. “Are we at war, Joy?”

  She raised her hand, and he could now see she had a very small, strange-looking gun hidden within her palm. “Oh dear, we’ve been at war since I first heard of you.” She fired some kind of electricity bolt as Kaede dove to the side. It missed him, but not by much; static electricity was making his hair stand on end.

  He heard thudding against the door as Ash attempted to break it down, and as Joy came around the table, taking aim, Kaede threw the neurotoxin fluid in her face. She recoiled, shaking her head and spitting. “What the hell is that? Are you trying to blind me?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Didn’t work.” She fired again, and he managed to scramble behind the console before the bolt caught him. She was dead, she just didn’t know it yet, and worst of all, it might take a couple of minutes for the really serious symptoms to take effect. He had to stay alive until then.

  “You know you just killed yourself, right?” he asked. Red lights started flashing, and an alarm started going off within the base. What fresh hell was this?

  She snorted. “Oh please. I can take you, your little sidekick, and your crazy father too. Corwyn has been mine for over ten years. You’re not taking it from me.”

  He heard her shifting position, and he knew she was changing angles to get off a shot. He might have to take it to make his final play. Dammit! Kaede tried to decide where an electricity bolt might hurt less—nowhere; it would hurt a fuckload wherever it hit—and reached into his special pouch, the one holding the round throwing stars.

  He rolled into the open, throwing the disc, as Joy shot him. The shot hit him in the shoulder.

  It was a bit like being struck by lightning while wearing metal Speedos. He blacked out for a second but came to feeling roasted and smelling something like burned hair and overcooked hot dogs. Oh shit, that smell was him, wasn’t it?

  He didn’t seem to have immediate control of his limbs, but he could lift his head, and he saw Joy was standing stock-still where he last saw her, the shapeless tunic she was wearing slowly turning red with blood centered around a wound in her abdomen. Blood was starting to dribble out her mouth, as that little disc pinballed around her insides, making them soup.

  “If it’s any consolation, you were dead anyway,” he said as the electrical gun fell from her hand. “I doused you with a neurotoxin, the same kind that killed Nighthawk. This just works faster.”

  He had no idea if she heard him or not. She was just staring at a nothing point in space and collapsed to the floor a second before Ash finally broke in the door. Ash saw her on the floor and kicked the gun away, all the while scanning for other ne’er-do-wells, and came over to him instantly.

  Ash gave him a hand up, and Kaede wasn’t ashamed to take it, especially since he was unsure if he could stand on his own just yet. Once he did, Ash eyed him with obvious concern. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not any more than I was before.” Actually, having all those volts go through him seemed to temporarily numb the pain in his ribs. Kind of a blessing. The klaxons were still going off, and the lights were still flashing. “I think we’d better get outta here, huh? I wouldn’t be surprised if she booby-trapped the base.”

  “A safe bet.” Ash put an arm around Kaede’s shoulders and helped him out of the room. They stopped briefly so Kaede could pick up the electricity gun Joy had been using. It looked pretty interesting.

  Although they moved at a kind of limping pace, they still hurried back the way they’d come, climbing over rubble until they found the back room, where the henchmen were still tripping balls.

  They had just reached the old sewer tunnel they’d broken in through when the plant blew up, sending a shockwave through the sewer tunnels that knocked them off their feet. But that’s all it did, as the building took the worst of it. At least the henchmen inside probably died happy.

  Ash crawled over to him and said, “Are you okay?”

  Kaede nodded. “Just winded. You?”

  “I’m fine.” Ash then jumped up to his feet, as if to
prove it. But he seemed a little twitchy. Was he really okay? Something seemed to be bugging him. He didn’t appear to have any new bloody spots, though, so maybe it wasn’t physical.

  By the time they crawled out of the sewer and returned to the car, they could hear the sirens from the emergency vehicles, but they were still remarkably far away. It seemed to take an absurd amount of time for any official vehicles to come to this side of town. Driving away, Kaede could see movement near the plant that could not be attributable to shadows from flames. Some of the henchmen must have survived, which was something. Kaede wondered what, if anything, they’d remember.

  Kaede and Ash went home, briefly, so they could do a bit of cleanup, since they were bloody and dirty. Kaede took a moment to duck into the secret lab and program some nanobots to inject into himself. His ribs started feeling better within a couple of minutes, and he could actually take a whole breath. And that charred-hot-dog smell started fading.

  It had been a hell of an electricity bolt. It had actually left a charred hole in the symtech suit. Was it a supposedly fatal strike? He wondered. It just meant his dad had monkeyed with his DNA more than he thought, and he should be grateful. And he couldn’t be a pure clone, could he? Well, maybe he’d messed with his own DNA too, but this felt like something that had to be done with purpose. Ash had probably been right. He was not his dad. Not exactly.

  Ash did wonder why they had to put on “fancy” clothes, but the last stop of the night was at Top of the World, a semiexclusive restaurant on the top of a skyscraper, where Neil and Abigail Miller were currently having their tenth wedding anniversary dinner. Neil had rented the whole place out.

  This time Kaede had Trevor pick them up and take them there, as this was a fancy place where fancy people apparently couldn’t drive themselves, and they wanted to fit in. Now technically, since Neil had bought out the place for the night, they shouldn’t have been allowed near, but after a little name-dropping and cash flashing, he and Ash were in the door.