by K. L. Lewis
“DeMarcus Maahes?” spoke one of the soldiers. “We have orders to escort you back to the hotel.”
This was just great. All this trouble and he still got nothing out of it, neither on his mother or his killers. It was as if life was giving him a slap in the face for the smallest luck he had. Every fiber of his body burned with wrath, but there was nothing he could do except follow the soldiers back to his family. No doubt they were worried sick. But a realization dawned upon him: Falay mentioned she was investigating rogue groups stalking about. That must mean that his killers might still be in the NAF if they’re still searching for Red Phoenix. If only he knew where.
While the assassins and police remained at the scene, one of the Iuvian soldiers led DeMarcus back to the hotel, where he took them to the shop where Jade was hiding. But her metal barrel was empty, and there was no sign of her anywhere else.
“DEMARCUS!” a man shouted in the distance. It was Shen’s voice echoing with worry through the streets.
DeMarcus followed the sound of Shen’s calls until he found him walking towards the cafe. Shen ran up and grasped DeMarcus by his shoulders and checked his body. “DeMarcus! There you are! You get shot? Stabbed? You bleedin’?”
“I’m…I’m fine,” DeMarcus answered.
Shen embraced him, almost squeezing the air out of his lungs. “I’d have a heart attack if I found you dead. Come on. James already brought Jade back to the hotel.”
They traveled the streets back to the hotel, where Jiao and Yue made a beeline from the doors for DeMarcus with tight bear hugs. Tears ran down Jiao’s eyes as she gazed at DeMarcus. “Oh, my goodness! I thought we lost you for good.”
“Nope, I’m still here,” he said with a shrug.
Yue smiled and threw a soft punch at his arm. “Don’t ever scare us like that again.”
They entered the hotel where Jade stood safe and sound next to Gabby. James descended the stairs with Tyrone, smiling at DeMarcus’s return. “There you are. Good thing Shen found you. Looks like dad’s training helped, huh?”
DeMarcus looked around, noticing that Keith was gone. “Where is Keith, anyway?”
“He and Abrams went to sort this mess out with the authorities,” Tyrone answered. “Then he said something about contacting Eden colony?”
“Well, today has been a rough night,” said James.
DeMarcus snickered. “Rough?”
“Some more than others,” James added. “Let’s all get some rest for tomorrow.”
Everyone took the elevators to their rooms with Gabriella and Jade separating to their floor. “Goodnight, DeMarcus,” Gabby said, waving as she left.
Shen smiled at DeMarcus. “I think she likes you.”
Tyrone grinned and nudged DeMarcus, who swatted him away. They entered their rooms where Jun and Amy embraced DeMarcus, grateful he was alive. After a short talk about what happened, everyone retreated for bed.
Everyone except DeMarcus. He sat on his bed, his mind racing over how he almost relived his nightmare. His mind was racing at everything that happened—those assassins who saved him as opposed to killing him, and a mention about Red Phoenix. Then there was that name he heard, Fara Torres.
Who was she? Her name was brought up alongside the Amalgam Concord, and he knew that couldn’t be a coincidence. But there was nothing for him to connect the dots with as time flew by and hit midnight. Nothing to do but change into his pajamas and get some rest. But a storage drive dropped from his pants to the floor, the same storage drive he got from that run in with those grey jackets. It might be related to everything that happened if those jackets had it, and this just might give him some answers to his questions.
Taking out his OmniMorph and inserting the drive, a file popped onscreen. Upon opening the file, the screen turned red, and the black, bold word “Red Phoenix” appeared in the center. It was funny, he remembered his mother saying this stuff would get him in a lot of trouble, yet trouble seemed to be following him regardless.
Now to see what the big deal is behind this “Red Phoenix” thing.
If only the stuff made any sense to him. It was mostly graphs and images of red and black jelly-looking objects, with text streaming about complicated stuff like necrosis and muscle fibers that the jelly-looking objects had themselves in. However, there was something he understood clearly, two images comparing a normal looking cell and one with the jelly objects that destroyed the cell from the inside. What the hell was this thing?
He ejected the drive and wrapped his OmniMorph back on his wrist, then hopped into bed. Whatever that stuff was, it looked dangerous. Maybe some sleep will clear his head of that nasty image.
CHAPTER 20 – EXFILTRATION
At the edge of the Illina province stood four walls in the center of an open plain. Pewter grey monoliths squared together in front of a flowing river as fleets of airships, boats, and trucks came and went from its ports and landing pads. Cranes bobbed and rose, lifting large crates as they moved within the center, all under the eyes of the four black glass watch towers at each of the wall’s corners.
The owner was Pewter Tech, its name plastered in white on the outside as Shipping Center GL12, with flashing yellow signs littering the land around it warning of any trespasser that dared to set foot without permission. Guards in pale greys and greens watched from the gated outposts near the roads for any vehicle that wandered too close, all of them armed with rifles and drones ready to act at a moment’s notice.
A dark grey truck rolled toward the first outpost from the Center. “Approaching target. Speed 50. First checkpoint ahead.” said the driver inside.
Stepping from the cargo bay to the front, Fara Torres took out her pistol and attached a suppressor. “Take us in.”
The truck continued, unconcerned with the Pewter Tech drone that was tailing it overhead. Fara turned back to the cargo bay to one of her militants standing by. “Lian, we’ve got a little bird watching us. Make it friendly as we move in.”
The brown haired parahuman unwrapped his OmniMorph from his wrist and opened a map showing the drone outside. A red square surrounded the drone on his display, and dozens of prompts and numbers appeared before it all turned green. “Got it,” Lian said. “We’re in luck, it’s coordinated with the other drones and operators in the area. Should give us an easy way in and out from surveillance.”
Hearing that brought a faint smile on Fara’s face as they slowed toward the outpost. Wrapping her head in a balaclava and hood before flashing on her goggles, she sat at the front passenger seat, and before the guard stationed snapped his gaze toward the window she vanished in place. She loaded her pistol with an STN round just before they came to a stop, watching as the pale human guard gave her parahuman driver a disgusted stare.
“And you are?” The guard asked.
“Here for the special package,” the driver said. “Allers sent us.”
Fara watched as the guard’s brows jump. “Oh, you’re those people.” They pressed on their panel and opened the gate. “The package is located in the Northern Square. Go in, take them, and get out of here.”
“Wait…’them?’ They never told us what the package was,” said the driver.
“I’m sure a sheer-mouth like you knows exactly what this kind of package is,” the guard said with a smirk.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” said Fara, spooking the guard as she raised her pistol and popped a shot at their face. As the guard dropped to the ground, Fara turned to the others cargo bay. “Tepha. Lian.”
The back of the truck opened up, and she watched as the two stepped outside and over to the fallen guard. “Make sure you take everything off him before restraining him. No telling what we’ll need on the way in.”
As the two lifted the human and heaved him over to the trees, Fara’s head snapped to the front window where a smaller truck with two people rolled toward them. Half a klick away, far enough not to notice them, Fara felt a small bead of sweat on her head before spotting Tepha out on the ou
tpost in the guard’s uniform, and hearing Lian close the cargo bay before the small truck drew near.
The truck stopped beside them, and another guard stepped outside. A tanner human, just as dull faced as the other, crossed past Fara and her driver toward the steps of the outpost. They peered through the window, squinting at the driver before rising up the steps toward Tepha. And just like the guard she shot down, they couldn’t see Fara in the passenger side, unaware of her watching him leer at Tepha before speaking.
“Hiya doin’, looks like it’s my turn to watch the post for you,” the guard said with a smile.
Tepha faked a sigh. “About time.” Then she looked back and winked at the parahuman driver of the cargo truck. “Care to give me a lift back to the center?”
The parahuman smiled. “No problem at all, ma’am. Hop in.”
Fara held her laughter at the guards vanishing smile upon watching Tepha stroll to the passenger side of the truck. Moving out so Tepha can sit in her place, she went to the cargo bay and snickered. “You almost made me feel sorry for that guy,” she said to Tepha.
“Almost” being the key word here because that paled in comparison to what her whole team was about to do. With none of the workers any wiser, no alerts or small groups of drones swarming after them, it was starting to feel too easy. But all the better it was, she thought, as the last thing she wanted was any attention.
The truck’s engine hummed, and they set off through the gates with the drone still hovering behind them on the way. Fara looked back into the cargo bay at her team setting themselves up. Lian went to work on his OmniMorph and hacked into the ID tags on the outfit Tepha stole from the guard, his screen blurring Tepha’s image and the guard’s photo into a garbled cloud of grey and white in place of both pictures. Meanwhile, Iya traded ammo with another human, Virmire, as they checked their weapons. Once they were a good distance away from the outpost, Fara tapped Tepha’s shoulder and reappeared, pointing back to the cargo bay for her to follow. Detaching a palm-sized disc from her OmniMorph, she projected a map of the entire shipping center before the entire team.
“Alright everyone, so far so good,” she began. “Our team is smaller than I’d like for this op, but so long as the Fronties don’t know we’re here we shouldn’t have much of a problem. Whatever this ‘special product’ is that Allers mentioned, it’s said to be located here in this part of the center.”
The map zoomed in to a square marked as the center’s Northern Section. “Thanks to that earlier guard’s slip of the tongue, it’s almost like we won the lottery. So, our goal is simple: we sweep the area for this product and keep it out of the Fronties’ hands. Tepha, you’ll be our main eye on the ground. Me and Virmire will cover you as we search the section and locate our target. Lian, Iya, you two find a vantage point and keep an eye out from above. Stun anyone that gets too close to us for comfort. Once we find our target, we’ll load it into the truck and get the hell out of here before they have time to realize what happened. Any questions?”
“What’ll we do with the target once we take it?” Virmire asked.
“We’ll figure that part out when we get to it,” Fara answered.
“Look alive, folks,” the driver said. “We’re here.”
“Alright, sync up!” Fara ordered as she re-attached the disk back to her OmniMorph. The map appeared on her goggle’s display, at the bottom corner with each team member’s ID lighting green as they linked up to the map and readied themselves for the mission. Snatching her rifle from behind the passenger’s seat and shifting over to the front of the truck, she watched as they passed through the grey walls and into the heart of the Center.
Growing from the horizon came mountains and canyons of shipping crates and containers, with loading suits and vehicles roaming back and forth between the roads and alleys between them. Staring down from heights above the walls around were pale green cranes lifting and loading the crates on the trucks, some moving toward the river at the far end of the center where large boats were stocked with blocks sitting on their wide bows.
In the air were dozens of Pewter Tech drones clustered like flat clouds as their sharp gaze rained down on everything that occurred below. Each one had red squares surrounding them on Fara’s goggles catching them in view, marking them from end to end of the facility. Then, from the corner of her goggles came a smaller square, one dotting the drones as they flew overhead.
“What’s this?” Fara asked.
“I’m using their drone’s link to their swarm net and tracking the others with the one we hacked,” said Lian. “I linked it to our scopes, so now we can see every drone they have that comes near us. Think of it as our own crude radar.”
Fara smiled at the addition as she watched the red dots crossing their map’s display on their way to the North and Eastern section. As soon as they were between the two, Fara pointed at an alley near the edge. “Take us over there,” she said.
They rolled over to the edge and came to a stop.
“Thermoptics on,” Fara ordered, vanishing like vapor in the air. Faint outlines waded around each militant as the rest of the team gathered up and followed Fara’s lead, all except for Tepha, who made the first steps out of the vehicle into the open as an ordinary Pewter Tech guard. On her OmniMorph, with the map displayed of the area, Fara placed a marker at a gap between the Northern section and the border wall. “Once we’re out, move here and hold your position,” she told the driver.
“Roger that,” said the driver.
The team stood up as Tepha slid the shutter doors up, light flooding the cargo bay and passing through Fara and the others like glass. Tepha reached at the bay’s edge and took with her a small case, then she put on her shades, scanned the vicinity, and stepped away from the truck on her way to the edge of the Northern Section. “All clear,” she said on her earpiece to the team.
Rushing out first, Fara and Virmire bolted toward the Norther Section and leapt up to the crates, following Tepha along as she passed by the other workers on deck. Seconds later, Iya and Lian launched out of the cargo bay, their friendly Pewter Tech drone flying with them as they bounded up the crates and onto the cranes and provided overwatch.
With the cargo truck out of sight, Fara set off with Virmire probing every nook and cranny of the section. It was like looking over a maze, with rows and columns leading to dead ends as the cranes shifted and moved the crates around the facility. Leaping over wide-open turfs where chatty Pewter workers strolled through and hung out, they scanned the horizon for their target, only to find the same walls of crates stacked on each other everywhere they looked.
This was getting them nowhere.
She pressed on her earpiece and radioed Tepha walking the floor nearby. “Hey, Tepha, any chance you can get one of these guys to spill a little more intel? Strike up a conversation if you can.”
She watched as Tepha played cool and looked around, first avoiding the small groups of workers in her haste. Fara followed along, watching over her like a hawk with a quiet aim at the workers passing by. It didn’t take long before one of the workers noticed Tepha’s faux pacing around the area and approached her. “You lost?” he asked.
Tepha turned to the worker. “Yeah, I was supposed to check on our ‘special’ product before our clients arrived and I think I might’ve missed a turn.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that too much,” said a female worker. “They’ve got a special team keeping eye on it at the corner. Strapped to the core. Wouldn’t dare think about go near them.”
“Really?” Tepha said, faking confusion. “They didn’t tell me. You think they’d give me a head up.”
“Don’t stress it,” said a third worker. “The heads here have always been slow on the word. They act like sending messages is too difficult these days.”
Tepha shrugged. “That or they’re worried about what happened to that Allers guy in Illina. I know I would be.”
“Any militants attacking this place would sure have some guts,�
� said the second worker.
As Fara tuned into the conversation, her eyes scanned the map at the corner of her goggles’ display, at the northern peak where a large white block sat past the edge of the Northern square. They’ve been almost everywhere except there, a lonely white shed sitting beyond the walls and pillars of crates.
“Lian,” Fara pinged, placing a marker on the shed. “Give me a survey of this part of the section.”
“One sec.” Within that moment, Lian opened a window with another drone giving a bird’s-eye-view of the area with the shed.
Fara’s eyes focused on the shed as she marked it on the map for the team. “Bingo,” she said. “Tepha, we’re moving in.”
Before she did, however, she kept a watchful eye on Tepha as she brought the conversation to an end. “Oh well,” Tepha said with a shrug, stepping away from the other workers. “Guess I’ll get to my other tasks then.”
The first worker waved her goodbye. “Take care.”
Jumping toward their lead, Fara and Virmire made their way over the crates to the hangar, leaving a waypoint on the map for Tepha to follow. They watched the remaining lifts take off from the site, leaving the area around the shed devoid of life. Dropping to the floor and dashing toward the shed, Fara backed against the wall with Virmire beside her, and peeked inside the shed from the first-floor window.
She didn’t see anyone from where she stood, no workers, no bots. Something didn’t seem right. She tapped Virmire on the shoulder and pointed up before leaping onto the walls with him, their fingers, knees, and toes sticking to the wall’s surface as they scaled up to the second-floor window. One quick peek confirmed their search: three heavily armed members of the Human Defense Front clad in their pale blue and green uniforms.
But what was more eye-opening was the ‘product’ they were guarding: three young women, two parahumans and one human, all scared to death as they kneeled with their hands over their heads.
