by J. N. Chaney
“But, sir, I don’t recall you ever saying anything mean about me.”
“If you don’t shut up, I just might.”
I gave the stapler a hard toss down the row, careful to keep it hidden by the cubicles so as not to betray where it had come from. It struck against a metal filing cabinet, making a beautifully loud bang. I poked my head up to see Travis turn aside. As he opened fire in the direction of the stapler, I drilled him with even more rounds. One of my bullets must’ve have struck his firing mechanism, because his rifle suddenly jammed.
Travis brought the shield around to block my fire while he looked down at his weapon. I could see anger flare in his eyes as he struggled with the receiver, yanking hard on it. But it wouldn’t budge.
I seized the opportunity and pointed my MX090 at his head, squeezing the trigger. Bullets cracked his helmet’s vision, barely exposed above the top of his shield. Suddenly, Travis threw his rifle away and jumped up on the desk in front of him.
The next thing I knew, Travis was leaping across the rows and vaulting over the cubicle walls. I had not really planned on this.
I continued to spray him with bullets, cracking his shield for the first time as he drew closer. I was fairly sure that a few bullets struck his arms and legs, but I couldn’t be sure because the freakshow of a man was barreling at me with a riot shield. Travis screamed as he ran, now fueled by a primal urge to run me over.
I backed up, but my legs hit the workstation behind me. Travis was maybe three meters away—just one cubicle wall left before he could leap into my row. I ceased fire and jumped to the workstation behind me. But I never made it over the half wall.
Travis leaped off the far desks, sailed over the carpeted walkway, and crashed into my back with the force of a runaway train. We broke through the next divider and toppled to the ground, my face slamming into the carpet. His fist came around the side of his shield and started pummeling my head. I strained to move out of the way, but the thug weighed a ton with all that armor on. Another two blows hit the side of my skull and made me see stars.
“Sir,” Lars said.
“Not now!” I yelled.
I tried to move my rifle to a place where I could use it, but it was nearly impossible, pinned near my side. The closest I could get was a potential shot near his leg—but there was no guarantee I wouldn’t shoot my own leg in the process. Still, with the way he was hitting me, I had to do something.
“Sir, I’d like—”
“LARS! SHUT UP!”
I wrenched my wrist around, feeling something pop, and hoped the barrel was aiming slightly up. Then I pulled the trigger.
Travis roared as my MX090 barked. I felt the heat burn my skin through my pants leg as the weapon discharged into the man’s shin. His weight shifted and I was able to wiggle partially free. But not before he brought out a knife, driving the blade into the carpet only a few centimeters from my head.
You’ve got to be kidding me!
“Is this a better time, sir?” Lars asked.
“NO!”
I attempted to fire again, but Travis pressed his knee onto my weapon. The only round I manage to fire went into the office furniture. Travis pumped the knife again, this time nicking my ear lobe. I had to get him off me—and fast. But he was just too damn heavy.
A single gunshot fired from somewhere above my right shoulder. At first, I thought Travis had produced a pistol. Instead, the man began gurgling, and his hand went limp on the knife. His will to fight was draining away. Then, within a matter of seconds, he’d gone limp.
Mild claustrophobia flared and I scrambled to get out from underneath the man—that, and I wanted to figure out what the hells just happened. As I got to my knees and clear of Travis’s corpse, I saw Rachel standing to my right wearing her stiletto heels. Her right wrist shook nervously, which caused the small silver pistol in her hand to wiggle back and forth. Finally, the weapon fell to the ground in a thud as she put her hands over her mouth and backed away.
“Sir,” said Lars, “Miss Fontaine has approached you with a pistol and fired on Travis.”
“You’re a little late, Lars,” I replied.
“But, sir, I was trying—”
“We’ll talk about this later.”
I turned to look at Travis and saw a gaping wound at the base of his skull, presumably where Rachel had struck him. The point-blank gunshot into the soft tissue had killed him instantly.
“Rachel?” I asked. What are you doing out of the office?”
“I… I heard gunshots, and I knew that Mr. Reynolds kept a pistol in his desk, and then I thought you might need help, and then I opened the door, and then I saw you fighting with that man, and then I—”
“And then you did a good job,” I said, reaching down to pick up the weapon. I stood, intending to hold Rachel’s biceps and look in her eyes to make sure she was okay. But as soon as I touched her, she melted into me and threw her arms around my chest. Her body trembled in the aftermath of killing Travis, probably the first life she’d ever taken. To be fair, I’d done ninety percent of the work. Okay, eighty. But her last twenty percent was important and had probably saved me a serious headache. Which reminded me: I touched the side of my head, feeling my hair damp with sweat and blood. I pulled my fingertips away and saw blood. I really need to get one of Lars’s magical chairs.
“Listen,” I said, “you need to get back inside the office.”
“But I want to stay with you.”
Was I really about to refuse a beautiful woman such a simple wish? Of course, Flint, godsdammit. “I’m flattered,” I told her. “But right now, the safest place for you is inside that office.” I pushed her away from my chest and began walking her back toward the corner of the office wing.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, her voice still shaking with fear.
“I’ve got to go check in on…” It was probably best not to tell her about Silversmith. For all I knew, she worked for the lady and would have a panic attack, which was the last thing either of us needed right now. “To check in on the rest of the hostages and see how they’re doing. The good news is that the police are here—”
“I saw that,” she said as we stepped back into Reynold’s office. “That’s good, right?”
“Sure is. They’re going to handle this and you’ll be out of here before you know it.”
She nodded.
“There is one thing I need to ask you, though,” I said.
“Sure, anything.”
“I have reason to believe that someone was trying to hack into the vault’s security matrix… someone on this floor, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Travis back there.”
She blushed, touching her lips with her finger. “That was me,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Code slicing may kinda be a hobby. I just thought maybe I could help, you know? Being in accounting, I have access to a few different backdoors into the vault. But I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, I promise.”
“I know you weren’t,” I replied. “But how did you know they were after the vault?”
“It’s the Oragga Complex,” she said, as if I was supposed to assume the rest. “What else would they be after, Mr. Oragga’s sword collection?”
“How do you know about his sword collection? Is that a hobby of yours too?”
“What? Oh gods, no.” She waved her hands at me. “Everyone knows about that. It’s on the company brochures. He’s very open about—”
“I’m kidding, Rachel. Relax.”
“Okay, phew! You scared me for a second there.”
“So—and I just have to ask this to be sure—you weren’t trying to help them steal anything, were you?”
“Help… steal? Who, the terrorists? No! You think I look like—”
“I just had to ask, Rachel. I’m sorry.”
“I was trying to shut down the security matrix,” she said, walking back to Reynold’s computer terminal. “Here, look.”
She brought up the holo display and show
ed me lines of code, as it was supposed to mean something to me. In reality, it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
“It does appear as if she’s telling the truth, sir,” Lars said in my ear. I nodded, more to Lars than to Rachel.
“Plus,” Rachel continued, “I figured if the system was offline, it didn’t matter what they tried. There’d be no getting in at all if it’s shut down.”
“And?”
“And what?” she asked.
“Can you shut it down?”
She shook her head. “No.” A look of genuine disappointment washed over her face. “Probably because it’s just my hobby.” Then the look changed to something more mischievous… something akin to a young teenager plotting an escapade they didn’t want their parents to know about. “But I hear that the professionals, the ones who operate off grid, are able to—”
“I don’t want to know about it, Rachel.”
She looked surprised. “Oh, I just meant—”
“If you tell me about your illegal fantasies, I may have to take you in for questioning, and I don’t have time for that right now.” My growing smile betrayed my humor. Rachel smiled too, then giggled a little. Damn, she was cute.
“My lips are sealed,” she said, pinching her thumb and index fingers and drawing them across her closed lips.
“Good. Okay, listen. I need you to stay in the office this time. Copy?”
“Copy,” she said with a nod. “Again, I’m sorry for leaving earlier. I just—”
“I’m not. You probably saved my life back there.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Thanks.”
“You’re… you’re welcome.” She brushed some hair behind her ear.
“And here,” I said, holding the pistol up and checking to see if there was still a round in the chamber. “You might need this again.”
“Oh, I don’t want that,” she protested.
“I know you don’t, but with the way you handled yourself back there, I wouldn’t be afraid to use it.”
“You think I’ll need to? You think they’ll be back?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll be drawing their attention elsewhere. But it never hurts to have insurance.” I placed the weapon on the desk in front of her, pointing the barrel toward me.
“You can’t stay?” she asked.
“Got somewhere else I need to be,” I replied.
“And you have even less time to get there than before,” Lars said in my ear. “Eight minutes, if Oubrick’s fifteen-minute window is to be believed.”
“Well,” Rachel replied with no small amount of melancholy in her voice. “I do hope I get to see you again.”
“Me too,” I said, stepping through the doorway. If I stayed any longer, Mrs. Silversmith would die, and right now, my damn testosterone was distracting me.
She waved as I pulled the pock-marked door shut. “Bye,” she said from the other side of the wood.
15
I bounded down the stairs, taking them four at a time, hands squeaking as they slid along the railings. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got to the vault floor, but I’d think of something. And if I couldn’t, Lars would. I couldn’t let the night administrator die.
“If he really wanted to flush you out,” Lars asked as I went, “why threaten you with executing only one hostage, one which you suspect he is going to kill anyway?”
“Because,” I said between gasps, “I don’t think that he thinks I can actually hear him.”
“You don’t, sir?”
“Think about it, Lars.” I took another deep breath, rounding another landing. “If I don’t have a comm and he commits to murdering a hostage every five minutes, let’s say—” I grabbed another breath— “then he’s executing his leverage faster than he needs to. So he threatens me with an expendable piece of leverage, a life he’s already planning to dispose of. If I show up, he knows I was listening. And if not, well, he hasn’t lost anything in the exercise.”
The AI paused. “So he’s created a no-win scenario for you.”
“Yeah, pretty much. If I keep myself concealed, I may save the hostages but lose Silversmith—”
“And if you choose to save Silversmith, you risk harming the remaining hostages. It is an elegant game theory scenario.”
“You… study game theory?” I asked, gulping down air.
“One might say I am game theory, sir.” He paused. “So what are you planning on doing?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Very interesting,” Lars replied, a clinical tone to his voice. “And how does it make you feel?”
“Hey, cut that out,” I said.
“Cut what out, sir?”
“That… the way you’re talking. Makes it sound like you’re studying me or something.”
“But I am studying you, sir.”
“Well, cut it out!”
Suddenly, Oubrick’s voice came over the comm again. “Why don’t we increase the time table? While your rescuers are busy coming this way, I wonder if you’ll provide me with the vault access passphrase.”
“Lars,” I said, slowing for a brief moment, “he’s gotta be talking to Silversmith, right?”
“That is correct. He is pushing her at gunpoint through the gap in the shell and up to the vault door’s internal security center.”
“Damn, he’s gonna kill her before I get there.”
“But according to his previous statement—”
“Rule number one when dealing with terrorists, buddy: don’t believe a word they say, unless they say they’re going to kill someone. That’s the only thing they don’t lie about.”
“Noted, sir. Still, I don’t see—”
“If she gives up the codes, they’ll have no use for her other than to draw me out. As soon as they see me, she’s served her purpose. And if she doesn’t comply… they’ll find another way to get those codes.”
That was when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to rescue Silversmith. My heart sank. Damn you, Oubrick. I hated bullies. And I hated bullies that liked to kill people even more.
“Sir, you have stopped descending,” Lars noted. “My I inquire as to why?”
“I can’t save her, Lars.” My lungs burned, my legs ached, and my feet were swollen. I stood on sub-floor fourteen’s landing, hands on my knees. “He’s going to have guys trained on the door, and there’s no way they’re falling for the vent shaft again.”
“What would you like to do next?”
“Kill ’em,” I said. “Kill ’em all.”
“Statistically, that is—”
“Shut up, bot.”
“Shutting up, sir.”
I paced on the landing. I fought to keep my mind off the doomed woman and focus on what to do next. But Oubrick had the damn channel open… on purpose, I was convinced.
“Those codes,” Oubrick said to Silversmith. When she didn’t reply, he continued. “Come now, Mrs. Silversmith. This doesn’t have to end in tragedy. There is a very real scenario in which you and your fellow hostages walk out of this alive. In that scenario, everyone gets what they want.”
“Sir,” said Lars. “Would you like to see the holo-feed on your wrist comm?”
“You can do that?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Godsdammit, Lars. You gotta let me know about this kind of thing sooner.”
“If you are able to better define the phrase this sort of thing, I will be sure to—”
“Show me the damn feed, Lars.” I extended my wrist and waited for the video to appear. When it did, I was looking down on Oubrick and Silversmith from a wide-angle camera placed in a corner. Two figures stood in a sterile white room, their large faces disproportionate to their bodies due to the camera’s lens. Still, I could clearly see Oubrick starting to trace Silversmith’s jawline with the barrel of his pistol.
“Now,” Oubrick said, “tell me the codes or else I’ll have a hostage executed.”
“Sh
e’s gonna get someone killed,” I mumbled.
“Are you certain?” Lars asked.
“I’ve seen this kind of thing played out before, pal. When you’ve seen as many nut jobs as I have, you learn to predict things like this. She’s a strong lady, so she’s going to call his bluff. Only…”
“He’s not bluffing,” Lars concluded.
As if punctuating our conversation, Silversmith refused and Oubrick called over comms. “Kill a hostage.”
I was about to ask Lars to give me a camera from the lobby, but I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. A gunshot overrode the mic on someone’s comm in the lobby. I heard screams fill the channel and watched as Oubrick held his wrist comm up for Silversmith to hear. He turned up the volume as the hostages screamed.
“You’re a monster!” she said, then spat in his face. Oubrick replied by back-handing her across the face. I didn’t want to watch what was coming next, but I had to. This was my beat now, my responsibility. And if I survived, I’d need to give a report of everything I’d seen. Not for the authorities, not for Mr. Oragga, but for the families of those who’d died. They needed to know how their loved ones died. I’d done it before on the force, and I’d do it again. Because it was the right thing to do.
“I’m going to ask you again. Please know, Mrs. Silversmith, that if you refuse me, I will have another hostage executed as quickly as the first, and—as I’m sure you’ve noticed—I have plenty of hostages to shoot.”
Silversmith was trembling. Tears streaked down her cheeks and her lips quivered.
“Just give him the codes, lady,” I said, willing her to make the right call. With any luck, Oubrick would end her life quickly.
“No more hostages killed?” she asked. I could hear the hint of hope underlying her steely resolve.
“No more hostages killed,” Oubrick repeated, placing a hand over his heart. I really wanted to kill this guy.
Silversmith lowered her head and clenched her fists.
“The codes, Mrs. Silversmith.”
“It’s just money, lady,” I said, practically begging her to give up the information. As if hearing my voice, Silversmith raised her head and strode forward. She raised her fingers toward the security terminal and began typing on a keypad.
