The Liquidation Order

by Jett Lang

  Queen folded her arms and looked around the blinding-white of the halls. Her ocular implants dampened the intensity of the light, but not by much. It was possible that no one here knew how to properly regulate the power output, or this was an intimidation tactic for new recruits. She went with the latter conclusion and feigned a squinting of the eyes.

  “Too bright for you?” Scar grinned.

  “A set of shades wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You gotta take the tour.” He had the double barrel draped over one of his slim shoulders. He combed his black-bearded cheek.

  “So, where are we headed first?” She stared down the hall.

  “Anxious?”

  “Eager,” she corrected. “There’re only a small number of these facilities on the continent not owned by a city-state or corporate body.”

  “She’s a learned one, isn’t she?”

  He gestured with his chin as he turned and began walking down the same hallway his superior had. She noted the luminous nature of the walls to either side. They were made of the same glass-smooth material as the ceiling and floor, her bootfalls making hardly a sound. Dampeners underneath, absorbing the sound waves – a hungry ocean of electronics. The cost of building this structure must have run someone far into the red, and here it was being used by criminals.

  They rounded a corner and were presented with another set of stairs. The flight was steep, but short, and soon they alighted into an open storage wing without the prior eye-burning illumination. Small metal crates were organized along the aisles, each long, wide avenue formed by industrial shelving. Scar took to the aisle labeled ‘3A,’ in a dimly-glittering font. His military boots echoed on the concrete.

  “Did your people add this wing separately?” she said.

  “While back, yeah. We’ve had to expand farther underground as recruitment went up. The cities clamp tighter and the people find other organizations that will take care of them.”

  Queen resisted an urge to tell him that the cities did this due to the raids and outlawed trading beyond the walls. She figured he already knew this, was going through his propaganda dialogue. Next he’d inform her about their wonderful dental plan.

  “How deep does it go?”

  “You’ll see. I’m taking you to the very bottom – it’s the best place to start.”

  The bottom of storage, huh? “I don’t see an elevator around here.”

  “I would hope not,” Scar said without elaboration. Then he was absorbed into a concrete wall.

  She watched the concrete-liquid ripple over the entire surface of the storage room’s rear wall like some wind-blown curtain. Perhaps to the average recruit this appeared a fascinating, magical wonder, but to her technologically-acclimated self it was a demonstration of outdated cloaking. The disturbance Scar’s body made when passing through was a kink engineers had worked out a decade ago. Her assessment of this place may have been preemptive. Prosperity wouldn’t want such an outdated base, and that boded well for her. Or, at a minimum, gave her a chance for long-term respite.

  Solidity returned to the concrete waters. His voice clear, Scar spoke behind the veil: “Nice, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah. Amazing.” She stepped forward.

  Scar was standing in a lift-cage between two waist-high partitions guarding her from a fatal plunge into black cables and rusted pipework that tapered off into darkness. The cage was hung by a steel cable, the suggestion of a crane somewhere overhead in the dilapidation. Scar beckoned her with a wave of his hand. The only thing that restrained her from saying “no” outright was the newness of the lift. Steel, sturdy, and enclosed. It looked like it could hold another ten people.

  These smugglers and thieves were earning revenue somehow. She entered the cage.

  Shutters rolled closed. She leaned against the left side of the elevator, opposite the similarly-posed Scar. He smiled rottenly and thumbed a red button. They descended in silence, listening to the lift squeak and thrum.

  ※

  The elevator opened to the smell of metallic water and the steady hum of laser-wire. Prison. Even through the static of the hologram cloaker, she knew this is what lay in wait.

  “What’s the matter?” Scar asked with a voice that knew the answer.

  She knelt for the dagger on her leg, but froze when she saw a red dot appear on her hand. Several others joined it along the arm of her jacket. Her fingers curled around the outline of the knife handle.

  “We installed those recently, too. You know how they work?” he said.

  “Friend-foe system.” They couldn’t have anything more complicated than that.

  “That’s right,” he breathed. “And we made a few changes, too. If you touch me, it goes off. You’re fast – I can attest to that. But you’re not machine-fast. That turret will cut you to shreds in–”

  “Yeah, blah blah blah, melodramatic villain speech,” said a male voice from inside. She couldn’t place it through the buzz of lasers. It was tired and bored. “Is it meal time yet? I’m starved.”

  “You’ll be dead if you don’t shut up!” Scar shouted. Queen was twinned in his sunglasses. He lowered his voice. “Remove the knife.”

  She considered dashing around him, pressing the green ascent button, and hoping the automated turret did not tear him to pieces before she was out of its line of fire. Then he popped in the slugs and pointed the double-barrel directly at her cheek, dug it in, his finger a hair removed from the trigger.

  That option was out. She lifted her jean leg and peeled off the retractable dagger. Gently, she placed it upon the grated floor.

  “Up,” he said. “And out.”

  The concrete waters undulated as she passed. Then she saw the man in the cell: Jack. How the fuck is he here?

  He was lying on a wall-bench with one hand and one foot bandaged. The cell was no wider than the bench, and housed a sink and toilet of stainless steel. The crimson hue of four lasers barred the front of his cell, flanked by two empty cells on either side. A ceiling-mounted autogun presided, its spider-eye lenses zooming in on her profile as she entered the holding area. There was no guard post. Besides the turret and cells, it was a featureless space of grey metal.

  “Move.” Scar prodded the small of her back.

  Queen’s attention was on Jack. Questions hovered as he was lost from view and she confined. Did he have contacts here? He must have known where she was going. She must have missed a tracker, in the hovercraft or on one of her items. The rucksack? The money? She’d checked it all, she thought. Had his own contacts betrayed him? On her bench, she sat, feeling numb. I should have killed him.

  Scar smiled down at her. “Don’t worry, you won’t be here long. We have potential buyers lined up for you. They’ll be by tonight to scope you out.” Red light inundated his black beard and scarred cheek. “I can’t wait to show them the goods. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment.”

  “Ever since your failed ambush?”

  His smiled twisted into a snarl. “Our clients prefer quiet merchandise. You behave yourself and things will be easy.” Scar leaned in almost close enough to burn himself. “And if the client doesn’t want you, well, I guess we’ll be spending time together.”

  Jack chuckled in the other cell. “I don’t think you’re her type.”

  “I don’t think you want to eat tonight. Either of you.” A beeper went off in his front pocket, the edges of his mouth dipping briefly.

  She closed her eyes and put her back against the steel wall. She heard Scar hurry to the elevator, slam the shutters. His screeching ascent carried. She sat for a long time, her hands clasped together in her lap, grey jeans cold on her skin.

  “So,” Jack said, finally.

  “No,” Queen replied.

  ※

  The one item Queen had forgotten to take from Jack’s person was the thing that had saved him, he explained: his radio. Her contact was his contact, and Jack, under the assumption that Hector Fine wou
ld grant him sanctuary in his time of need, tuned into this base’s frequency.

  “I didn’t leave you much,” she said.

  “No, you certainly did not,” Jack said. “But you did leave the Winnow. Which they now have. Price of admission.”

  It made sense to use the Winnow as a bargaining chip, given the situation she left him in. “Some assassin you are. That gun is a lifeline. You traded it away for imprisonment.”

  “What’s the alternative? Wait for the boss to find me and hope he’s in a generous mood? You know how that turns out.”

  “Watch it.”

  “Or what? You goin’ to shoot my other foot?” He laughed.

  “That sounds like a great idea, actually. Hand me your gun– oh wait.”

  “Where did your soft heart go?” Jack said.

  “I left it back in the forest.”

  “We’re still in the forest.”

  “And here I thought we were miles underground, where no one can help us.” She sighed. “Silly me.”

  She heard him shift and stretch in his cell. “You think I can finish my story sometime soon? You keep interrupting.”

  “Where are my manners?”

  “You’re forgiven. Anyway, I got in touch with Mr. Fine’s majordomo, Mathew, and he agreed to patch me up, give me a place to lay low for the supplies I had. Well, they flew out, flew me back to Grey Wolf and fixed me like they promised, but after that they didn’t really see the point in keepin’ their word,” Jack said. “Mathew has convinced Hector’s son to change the business into a slave-based economy. Human traffickin’, it turns out, is not regulated as harshly in Prosperity as the narcotics Hector sold.”

  “You didn’t know that Mathew was in charge.”

  “You’re on the money today. He told me that Hector and his son were busy, couldn’t talk to me. When I persisted, he agreed to get me an audience.” Jack knocked on steel. “My audience.”

  “What did you tell our former boss, then?”

  “Nothin’. I crushed my ORD, so my last known coordinates are in that field where you left me. I’m not makin’ it easy for him to track me, not that it’ll stop him.” There seemed to be something he didn’t want to tell her. She had no urge to press him on it, though.

  “And to think I wanted to run away with you.”

  “We would have ended up in the same place. Hector was our closest contact. Well, ex-contact. Now we have Dictator McMathew and his merry band of beards.”

  He was right, even if she wouldn’t admit it. She plucked a grey thread from her jeans. “Do they have a buyer for you, too?”

  “Not that I’m aware. They just wheelchaired me down and dumped me in.” While she couldn’t see him, she could imagine him pantomiming the action. “I’ve seen the doctor who worked on me, and Scar. Other than that, no one.”

  “Who feeds you?”

  “There’s a dispenser above the toilet.”

  “I thought that was a faucet.”

  “It’s that, too. They have some strange pipe-work goin’ on.”

  Queen got up and tried to turn the faucet handle, but the thing would not budge even when she put both hands into the effort.

  “I coulda told you that was no good,” Jack said, hearing her strain. “They open the tap at five P.M.”

  “Color me distrustful.” She pulled the handle toward herself again, planting her boots on the sides of the toilet and leveraging. It didn’t move an inch. Another attempt, her full strength to bear, and nothing. She stood back and considered her nemesis, the faucet.

  “Are you really that thirsty?”

  “I’m probing for weaknesses,” she said.

  “You think I didn’t do that already?”

  “Ignoring the fact that you’re injured, and thus incapable of sufficiently mounting an escape, you’re also a liar.” Same procedure on the other handle. It was looser, but still locked in place. Despite her vaunted strength, she wouldn’t be able to pry it off. She lowered herself to the cold, grated floor, her back to the red hum of laser bars.

  “How’d you meet Hector?” She was concentrating so intensely on the interior of her cell that Jack’s voice startled her.

  “A friend,” she said.

  “Which friend?”

  “A dead one. Why?”

  “Idle conversation.”

  “We’re kind of in a situation here.”

  “Right. And how do you plan to get out if you can’t even work the faucet? There’s one way out, and it left hours ago.”

  Queen closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Are you stuck in devil’s advocate mode now that you’re a cripple?”

  “There’s that sanguine personality.”

  She clicked her tongue. “You know, I’m glad things turned out like this. Once I’m out, I can leave knowing that you’ll be rotting in this prison for a very long time.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because you’re a bad person and a horrible professional.”

  “Oh, the pot and the kettle are clashin’ tonight!” Laughter. “How is it that you have a buyer, then? I’ll bet it doesn’t have to do with your official training. When they come by, be sure to refer them to me; I’ll give you a glowin’ recommendation. ‘Five stars in the sack.’”

  “At least one of us is,” she said. “Maybe you should take your tantrums out on your faucet. There are two failures in this room; it’s just a matter of degrees.” She stared over her shoulder at the spartan holding area. “You know what the funniest part is, Jack? You were too stupid to recognize you had no way out. Maybe you’ve been in this game longer than I have – I can’t say – but did you honestly believe our boss would let a loose end like you walk away, even after you killed me? We each knew too much.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. He needed me,” Jack said, the sarcasm drained from his tone.

  “He needed you as much as he needed me. We’re very well trained, very highly paid, and very, very expendable. You read my profile. You know I had an impeccable record, one blemish aside. He preys on those mistakes, barters us, kills us off. Those weren’t mere rumors floating around the office, those were the risks we assumed to earn the kind of money we did. So don’t sit over there, with a self-satisfied grin on your face and downplay me like I’m some throwaway mercenary.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” Numb, bitter.

  “That’s the kind of denial that slipped you up.”

  “Just shut your mouth.”

  She returned her attention to the toilet and faucet combination beside her bench. Everything she saw before her was bolted to either the floor or the wall. She wasn’t going to be getting out of here anytime in the foreseeable future. Her one hope was being purchased. To have buyers so quickly, it could only have been the Ringmaster and Ringmistress. It wasn’t anyone else, couldn’t be. Those meatheads that guarded them would be the real problem. Overcoming them would win her freedom in the short-term, but she’d have to find another barter village not neck-deep in the slave trade. She had other contacts, to be sure, yet they were nearer to New Paradise. Too near. Tall order, especially if her captors confiscated her severance still waiting in her rented room. If they did, she would have a hard time finding it.

  She crawled into bed and lay observant of the sonorous red beams.

  ※

  What seemed like hours passed, and then she heard the shutters of the elevator open, followed soon by footsteps. The arena entourage. They began speaking in low tones close to Jack’s cell. Scar was with them. As the conversation progressed it became apparent that the ring leaders were displeased by the ride down, were voicing their concerns over the stability of the lift. Not up to safety regulation. Scar was apologetic, but it was obvious that he didn’t care. He changed the subject quickly to the matter at hand: Queen.

  “The price is set,” he said.

  The Ringmistress replied, “As long as you did not damage her.”

  “See for yourself.”

&nbs
p; Soft clap of leather soles on concrete, an exotic aroma previously lost among cafeteria smells. The scent lingered, the shoes ceased. “She appears healthy. Are you awake, dear?”

  Queen kept her eyes closed, her chest rising, falling.

  “She’s faking it,” Scar said. “People like her never sleep.”

  “You’d do well to respect my future property.”

  “Are we in business, then?”

  “Yes, I believe so. Pay the man, Jeffry.”

  “You know,” Scar said, “we do have this other guy here. We heard them talking over the camera mic. Sounded like they were getting on really well.” A pause as he considered his words, or tried to establish a meaningful effect. Then, “I could give you a nice discount for both of them. If you’re into package deals.”

  “Is he security as well?” the Ringmaster said.

  “That’s what he said. Pilot as well.”

  Queen could visualize the old Ringmaster’s head turning to regard the woman who looked into her cell, either demurely or hungrily, or both. At last, she said, “Let me see the man closely.” Leather soles clapped, traveled over to Jack’s cell.

  “He came to us injured; we had to patch him up. Doctor said the wounds will heal clean.”

  “He is lovely in his own right,” the Ringmistress breathed.

  “Thanks,” Jack said brightly. “You’re a fetchin’ specimen yourself, sister.”

  She giggled. “Polite one, aren’t you? Tell me your name.”

  “Kyle Dern.” Jack shifted. Possibly sitting up.

  “Are you a pilot, Mr. Dern?”

  “I am.”

  “And a security man?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do not call me ‘ma’am’. It makes me sound old.”

  “Miss, then,” Jack said.

  “Very good,” the Ringmistress said. Queen could hear the joy in her voice. “I would like an experienced chauffer, Mr. Dern. Do you think you are the right man for the job?”