A wet breeze drafted in from the ruined window. Glass shards glittered in the rain-soaked carpet. She reached for the doorknob and pulled the door open a crack.
Dark shadows swept through the living room, and Jonah was on top of them quickly. He wrestled with a figure covered head-to-toe in black. A second shadow moved toward her.
A whisper of a gunshot punctuated the air, and she saw a cloud of red explode from Jonah’s belly and out his back. The shock choked his scream, and he stumbled backward, a single hand going to his belly.
Her shout died in her throat as the door was pushed open. A shadow moved across her, and a dark, almost-ethereal hand reached for her.
Keeping the HK4 close to her body, nearly invisible in the inky shadows of the night, Mesa fired three times. Despite the panic that threatened to overwhelm her, Mesa’s aim was true. The bullets hit center mass in a tight configuration, rocking the intruder back on his heels, but that was not enough to drop him.
He was caught off guard, and she sprung up at him. She grabbed a fistful of his Kevlar shirt and turned him around, toward the window. Pushing him forward, she used his body as a shield. No shots came from outside.
She risked a quick glimpse back over her shoulder, out the bedroom door. A tall, dark-clad man stood over Jonah and fired twice. The fragmentation bullets tore apart his skull. Tears stung her eyes, blurring her vision, but she couldn’t allow herself the moment of sadness. Or weakness.
The soldier tried to reassert himself and regain control by stopping his forward momentum, but she was pushing hard, amped up by adrenaline. His hands hit the window ledge, and she crashed into him with a lung-jarring oomph, toppling them both through the window.
Glass stabbed at his Kevlar, but the material was too tough for the glass to do any damage. Mesa wasn’t as lucky. The shards tore at the sleeves of her blouse, slicing open skin. Her arms were bleeding, as was her face, from a shallow cut atop the curve of her cheekbone. Her shin snagged on a long sliver, and the glass knifed its way along the bone, cutting through the jeans and breaking off against the tongue of her sneaker.
They hit the metal landing of the fire escape hard, knocking the wind from both of them. On top, she knew she was a clear target. She had fractions of a second before the sniper took a shot.
The soldier heaved up and threw her off him, bulling his way to his feet. He turned, but she was already recovering, rolling onto her side. A powerful kick connected solidly with his knee, and his leg jutted backward painfully, in a way nature never intended. Tendons snapped, and his leg buckled under the weight of his two hundred-plus pounds. He hit the slick metal grating hard. He reached for Mesa, trying to snag one of her ankles, but she was moving quickly down the metal steps to the landing below.
Sniper’s bullets pinged the metal around her, coming rapid-fire. She ducked, letting herself half-fall down the winding stairs. Her feet hit the landing on the third floor, and she pivoted, throwing herself forward and down to the second. Sparks flew as the bullets hit the support struts of the fire escape surrounding her, as she tumbled to the second-floor landing, and bounced down the steps to the first.
The ladder was too risky. Even if she slid down it, she made for an easy target. When her feet landed on the first floor, she turned heel lighting fast and launched herself over the railing, hoping the move was unexpected enough to surprise the shooter and give her the lead time she needed.
She let her body go loose, fell into a tumble, shoulder-rolled across the wet concrete of the alley, and found her feet again. She sprang up into a dead run. Her sneakers splashed through the puddles, loud and quick.
No shots followed.
The glass lodged against her ankle bit through the thin shoe leather, stabbing deeper with each footfall. She ran—running through the bloody hurt, through the sawing pain, and into the rain-soaked street and the dying nightlife as the bars of Pioneer Square emptied.
Before she made it to King Street and the edge of her apartment building, a door burst open. A black shape launched forth and tackled her to the ground.
The HK skipped out of her fingers and skittered away against the cold concrete, stopping out of reach.
A fist collided with her face, rocking her head back. Her skull crashed against the floor of the alley, sending silver glints exploding across her vision. He punched her again, and the world went hazy, crazily out of focus. He pushed back, sitting up, straddling her, pinning her body to the ground. He reached for the gun at his waist.
She flicked open the buttoned hasp and drew her knife, blinking to clear her eyes. They were gummy with rain-washed blood. Icy cold drops of rain prickled her skin. She turned the knife in her hand then stabbed it up, launching herself toward him. The knife worked its way between the hem of his Kevlar shirt and the waist of his pants to puncture the thin weave and stab into flesh.
He howled, and she took a moment’s satisfaction. The screams of heavy boots smashing against steel stole her pride. The sniper was clanging his way down the fire escape, fleeing his shooter’s perch.
She kicked backward, tearing the knife out of her attacker, then kicked him roundly in the chest with both feet. He toppled backward. She scooped up the gun and ran, firing at him as she went, not caring if she hit but hoping she at least gave him a few things to think about.
The HK4 got tucked into a hip pocket, the knife went back into its sheath, and she pulled her shirt down to cover both.
She knew she looked hellacious, soaked and bleeding. Even the half-cognizant drunks stared.
She pushed her way into the crowd and pounded through the rolling hills of the streets, her legs complaining with exhaustion, until she hit Yessler.
She joined the ranks of a cluster of people waiting for the last bus of the night. Glancing back the way she had come, she waited for a glimmer of recognition to pass across somebody’s face as they spotted her. She waited for her black-clad gunmen, but none came. No faces locked onto hers. Those who did get catch a glimpse quickly averted their eyes, not wanting her problems to become theirs. She was ignored. Invisible. Exactly as she wanted.
Bus 71 pulled to the curb with a gassy stomp and the hydraulic hiss of the doors pulling apart. She pressed her thumb against the biometric reader, fully aware that she was leaving a trail. Then she hopped back off before the doors closed and pushed her way through the small group coming up the stairs behind her. She ignored their confusion and shouts.
She took in her surroundings, moving quickly away from the bus stop, her head swiveling back and forth over each shoulder. She stopped and scanned for tails every few blocks as the streets emptied. She suspected anybody following her would be easy to spot.
But there was nobody.
She ducked into the opening of another alley and pulled the glass free from her shoe, slicing open a finger in the process. Relief from the pain in her ankle was immediate, but her sock was soaked through, and the interior of the shoe was a mushy, squelching mess.
She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to re-center herself. All she saw was Jonah’s face being blasted apart as he died in their living room. Every time she blinked, she saw it all over again.
With a mental tug, she brought the commNet online and sent an encrypted shout to Kaizhou. He was still awake.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice spiked with a frightened edge at the sight of her.
“I need your help,” she said. “Come get me. Warn the others. I don’t think any of us are safe.”
He nodded, knowing better than to ask for details. “I’m on my way.”
She’d warned Kaizhou about this day a while ago. After he’d admitted to being a memorialist, Mesa had told him of her father’s paranoia and confided in him about the weapons training and self-defense classes. A part of her thought it was crazy, but he’d disagreed.
“You don’t know wha
t you went through before,” he had reminded her. “He does. Maybe it’s for the best. For your own good.”
Since then, they’d both hoped this day would never come. But it had, following closely on the heels of the murders of their Los Angeles counterparts. A part of her hated Jonah for not being more open with her about her past. He had kept too many secrets, too much history buttoned up, thinking her too fragile to handle the full, unvarnished truth. She wondered if any of that history would have helped her spot the threat ahead of time. If they could have, she might have prevented the whole mess.
She allowed herself a moment of recrimination and then sealed off those emotions. Shifting the blame and finding excuses wouldn’t help.
Wincing and shivering as the exhaustion hit her hard enough to nearly knock her back down on her backside, she stood, favoring her injured foot. She was walking with a limp, but at least she was walking.
Moving down East Yessler, she made her way to Kobe Terrace Park. Again, she kept a careful watch and studied her surroundings, keeping close to the clusters of people wandering the streets as their own nights unwound. Nobody paid her any particular attention.
She hid among the shadowed terraces and dug around in the backpack. Her fingertips brushed crinkling cellophane, and she pulled out the pack of stale cigarettes. She popped the lid, shook loose a smoke, worked the lighter loose, and lit up. That first hit of nicotine made her dizzy, and she held the smoke in her lungs for an extended moment, slowly letting it escape. Enjoying it.
She tried not to close her eyes for long.
Chapter 4
Kaften kept pressure on the knife wound, pushing the pain out of his mind. The medichines that coursed through his body would be going to work soon, and the wound would be just another memory. The bleeding was already slowing as the medichines repaired broken vessels and initiated cellular repair. Another half hour, and the deep gouge would be a faint line across his abdomen.
He brought up the team’s health assessments. Only Crassen had come through unscathed. Boyd’s diagnostics had flooded his system with morphine, knocking him out. The knee would take longer to fix, but he would be back on his feet by morning.
The bus was a non-event. They’d arrived ahead of the 71 and staked out the stop from across the way. When Mesa didn’t get off, they followed it to the next stop then maintained the trail through to the end of the bus’s late-night service. It had emptied, and the girl was nowhere to be found.
Maybe that was a good thing, he thought, taking stock of this clusterfuck of a mission.
“Hack into the local services,” Kaften ordered Crassen. “Get us eyes and find her.”
Crassen nodded, then his eyes dulled as he focused on the electronic dirty work. He was searching out a secure avenue to sneak into the local surveillance drones and the city’s monitoring networks. An image of Mesa Everitt would be uploaded, along with hidden lines of code that would hijack the Seattle security services and flag Kaften’s team if the electronic eyes across the city captured her image. Because they did not want the local services picking her up on a false all-points bulletin, they had to keep everything as low-key as possible.
Kaften shifted, keeping his prosthetic hand pressed tightly to the wound. The pressure was unbearable, but he needed a few more minutes before the medichines kicked in. Sweat beaded across his forehead. He debated the merits of waiting to call Schaeffer and deliver his after-action report, but he decided it wouldn’t matter. Hell, maybe his injuries might even make the suit sympathetic. Fat chance, he thought.
Hell with it.
“Status?” Schaeffer asked. He appeared on Kaften’s retinal display then took a moment to observe his subordinate. Kaften watched as Schaeffer’s eyes crinkled at the corners briefly then dismissed whatever ounce of humanity he possessed in favor of being obstinate. His eyebrows lifted with impatience.
“Status?” Schaeffer asked again, clearly annoyed.
“Jonah Everitt has been eliminated.”
“And the girl?”
Kaften let out a slow, pained breath. “We lost her.”
“And how did this happen?”
“We underestimated her.”
“You were warned about them. In fact, if I recall correctly, you warned us.”
“Yes,” Kaften said. “I did warn you. Three years ago. To take them out when you had the chance. Not fuck around and wait.”
The suit took a deep breath, his face reddening. The corners of his jaw jumped as he fought down the anger.
“Three trained soldiers against an old man and an amnesiac. This is ridiculous.”
“We underestimated the situation. And the old man is dead.”
“A failure is still a failure.”
Kaften lowered his eyes. Arguing was pointless.
“And this is your second failure in a single day. Thankfully, we’ve been able to… hmm… secure three of the memorialists you allowed to escape earlier.”
“We’re in the process of tracking Mesa down.”
“She needs to be eliminated immediately.”
“Has she made contact?” Kaften asked, his eyes narrowing.
“No. Not yet. We cannot allow it. You need to find her. Now.”
“I understand.”
“Kaften?” Schaeffer said, making sure he got the man’s attention before the commNet was disconnected. “You have two strikes against you. I do not expect there to be a third.”
“I understand,” he repeated. He let his eyes close as the call terminated, then he settled his head back against the seat rest.
Mesa felt queasy, the strong stink of stale urine mingling with her own sweat and blood. The auto shop’s bathroom was a greasy mess. The grout between the wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling tile was stained black. Rameez’s uncle had let them set up shop in the sub-basement sometime back, and they’d gathered there for what felt like their last meeting. The rest of the group was waiting on her to emerge, waiting for answers, ready to pepper her with questions. She pushed all that to the backburner and shut it out of her mind. The whine of the electric razor blotted out the world for her.
With a fresh cigarette dangling from her lips, Mesa met her eyes in the mirror. The razor was set to its second-lowest setting, and she shaved off the right side of her head. Kaizhou did the back, baring her scalp from the peak of her skull to the nape of her neck. Other than the long strip of hair that ran across the top of her head and down to her left shoulder, her skull was covered in downy peach fuzz.
She colored the buzzed portion purple, a brighter shade than Ashita’s, and streaked the jet strip with neon-green highlights. She braided a few fingers’ worth at the front and let it to dangle alongside her cheek.
Hair and cigarette ash collected in clumps in the bathroom sink. She flicked the smoking nub into the pile. “What do you think?” she asked.
“Different,” Kaizhou said. But he didn’t seem displeased.
Earrings were the next step. She hated the idea of needles stabbing through her face, but eyebrow rings, a nose ring, and large hoops through each earlobe would help fool the superficial facial-pattern-recognition cameras. It wouldn’t do shit if she had to pass through body scanners, nano security clouds, or X-ray imagers, but she wasn’t planning on going through the high-security areas of airports or harbors. She needed to change up her appearance so that she no longer resembled the Mesa everybody was familiar with—the Mesa on her ident card, passport, and online profiles.
Maybe some lip rings, she thought, adding more bling to the list. She dropped the lid on the toilet, took a seat, and nodded at Kaizhou. Ready.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight, sending up purple flares behind the sealed lids. The ice against her eyebrow numbed her, but she still let out a groan as Kaizhou pulled the skin taught and slid a long needle through. Her knees knock
ed together, but the operation was over fast.
“Take a look,” he said.
She blinked, surprised that part was finished. The tiny red hoop stood out against her inky eyebrows. Mesa smiled, approving, but she was glad to not have to repeat the job on her already-pierced ears.
In the go bag were black-market contacts that would alter her retinal patterns enough to fool eye scanners. The contacts would not interfere with her DRMR implants and communications software since the retinal displays interfaced directly with the optic nerves rather than the eyes themselves.
Old-fashioned, thick-framed, non-prescription glasses helped complete the disguise. With the piercings and change of hairstyle, her surface appearance was markedly different. She had shoes with tall heels and flat-soled sneakers with lifts to mask her true height. Jade or Ashita could make a run for her and buy bras with additional padding and support cups to help round out her features and change her bustline. Most people who saw her wouldn’t recognize her. The big question was whether or not it would fool the city-wide security feeds. A street test was the best way to find out for sure.
She rotated her injured foot, happy with the medichines’ progress. The bleeding had stopped, and the only sign of injury to her shin was a thin, jagged white line. It didn’t hurt much, but the bone felt bruised, and her knees ached. Her elbow smarted a bit, too, where she’d banged it on the fire escape.
Looking down at her arm, she realized one last alteration still needed to be made. The dragon tattoo that wrapped around her arm was one hell of a distinguishing feature. Unless she wore long sleeves, the colorful design was bound to standout. One look at her arm and all of her efforts at disguise would unravel in a blink.
She shut her eyes and took a long, deep breath. Aside from a handful of mems, the tattoo was her only connection to the Mesa of old, her prior self. That sleeve of ink and vibrant hues connected her to her heritage. The Japanese icon—a massive, long-winged creature that wended its way around her from wrist to elbow—acknowledged her mother’s side. It sat atop a Gaelic cross, an icon of her father’s heritage. This symbol of family had meant a great deal to her former self, whom she constantly lived in the shadow of and hoped to, one day, bring into the light.
Emergence (A DRMR Novel Book 2) Page 4
