Hostiles

by Ethan Johnson

  Diane took the opportunity to put some distance between them. She rushed down the alley to a narrow passageway. She wondered if she would fit while clad in her body armor. To her relief, she squeezed in sideways and made her way to the other end. She exited the passageway onto a sidewalk bordering a busy street.

  Diane holstered her sidearm. Passers-by gave her odd looks, if at all. She patted her hair and plotted out her next move. New York was awash in neon and plasma lights, advertising local and national brands. Diane worked out the location of the seawall and headed in that direction. She crossed the street and narrowly avoided a delivery van speeding along to its programmed destination. Those things need better safety features, she thought with a huff. They can’t just roll over everybody.

  Diane reached the seawall at least three blocks from Thomas Denning’s dead body. She surveyed the wall in search of a path across the Hudson. She spotted a bridge in the distance, but nothing close by that suggested how so many people pass between the states each day. Diane reached up to switch on her earpiece, then thought better of it. The Masked Man wasn’t going to tell her anything, she concluded. He wanted her to figure it out on her own, so that’s what she resolved to do.

  She considered asking a local how to get to Newark but thought better of that too. Talking to people was exposure. Her mission was to get back home without attracting lots of attention. Diane followed the seawall in hopes of finding a way back that didn’t involve exposure or detection.

  The buzz of a drone hummed behind her. Diane patted her thigh and summoned her sidearm once more. She ducked behind a utility box and fired a single shot at the drone, sending it skittering across the top of the seawall and into the Hudson. She blew on the tip of her gun and holstered it. Denning’s men aren’t going to find me down there, she thought with a smile.

  Gunshots pealed to her left. The utility box sprayed sparks in all directions as it took heavy fire. Diane pulled her sidearm out again and shot a man in the chest. He slumped over the trunk of a parked sedan. She counted at least three more hostiles in his general direction. She also realized she hadn’t been keeping count of how many shots she had fired. She ducked down to eject the magazine when a flashbang grenade landed beside her. She threw her arm across her eyes and slammed into the seawall when the device exploded.

  Diane was deafened by the detonation. Her ears pealed with an electronic whine. She smirked at the high likelihood the Masked Man would use this as another reason for insisting she wear a full helmet like his covert operatives. She shook her head at the thought. She needed to see everything, she affirmed inwardly. She wouldn’t have seen it coming without side vision.

  Her forehead throbbed at the thought. Side vision? No, that wasn’t right. There was another word, she thought. A better word. Just one. Not side vision. That sounded childish. What was it? She scowled as she racked her brain for a better word choice. A man wearing a flak vest shuffled forward and trained a red laser sight on her forehead from an impressive machine gun. Diane huffed at the man. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here,” she said. The man flinched. Diane put a bullet between his eyes.

  Diane rubbed her ear painfully and left her temporary resting place. More men were closing in on her. She saw two heads bob next to a row of parked cars, then heard a man shout, “Hostile located.” Diane ducked into an alcove. I’m not the hostile, she thought with a snort, they are. She thought about the Good Book again. When multiple hostiles were in play, it said, get to higher ground. She looked across at the seawall. That wasn’t what the Good Book was talking about, she mused. Higher ground gave better sight lines to the hostiles and increased her probability of picking them off one by one. Standing on that wall would only make her a sitting duck. She had other ambitions.

  Diane picked up a rock and chucked it at a parked car near the chief bodyguard. She assumed that was his title. He barked orders to the others and directed them to kill her. That made him her primary target. However, she didn’t expect the other men to fall into disarray if and when she killed their commander. They seemed well-disciplined on their own. Whoever Thomas Denning was, he wasn’t the leader of the usual snot-nosed street gangs she encountered on patrol. The commander flashed hand signals she had seen in the Good Book. Her father claimed it was written by a Navy SEAL. She didn’t understand how seals could write books. She decided the military had all kinds of secrets. The way her father’s eyes flashed at the mention of Navy SEALs, they must be amazing animals.

  “SEALs can kill a man ten ways to Sunday with only their teeth,” he said once. The seal that wrote the book appeared to prefer using guns and long knives, she recalled. The signal for flank-two followed by hammer-down was given by the commander. Diane crouched down and readied her sidearm.

  Two men stepped before her with their laser sights trained on the center of her chest. Diane glanced down and remembered she was in her full body armor. Unless they had armor piercing bullets, she was in no danger of being gunned down, or so she thought. Before they could prove her wrong, Diane activated a switch on her waist with her left hand. “Flares,” she said. Bright sparks shot into their eyes. They grunted and groaned at the countermeasure, then pointed their guns at her once more. Diane fired two shots in rapid succession, killing them both. She looked across at the seawall. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to get up there after all, she thought.

  Diane ran as fast as she could toward a parked sedan and jumped up on the hood. The commander barked orders when she went airborne. Diane focused on executing her plan and clambered onto the roof of the car, putting deep dents into it where she stood. She used the sedan as a springboard to get on top of a cargo van, then onto the top of the seawall. She looked down to her right and spotted the commander shouting something into his wrist. Diane squeezed off a shot and struck his comm unit. The man shook his arm painfully and swore. That’ll keep him busy for a minute, she thought with a wry smile.

  Diane looked down to her left. A small boat hummed past. Its pilot was a young man wearing a white t-shirt and dark jeans. He gawked at Diane. She waved him over to the seawall, but after catching sight of her sidearm, the pilot shook his head and sped away. Diane swore under her breath and turned her attention to Thomas Denning’s men. The commander scored a direct hit on her breastplate with a long rifle. The bullet didn’t pierce her armor, but she did lose her balance. She fell backward over the seawall and into the Hudson River.

  The water was colder than Diane expected. Her body armor pulled her under the dark surface of the river. Diane gulped a breath before dropping out of sight. She struggled to remove her armor before running out of air. She tossed her sidearm aside and found the release rings to jettison the lower half of her armor. Once her legs were free, she kicked furiously until she broke the surface of the water. She gasped for air and looked around. The seawall was at least fifteen feet away, by her estimate. Manhattan was not her objective. She found the release rings for the upper half of her armor and sent it rushing to the bottom of the river.

  Diane sucked in another breath and aimed for the shores of New Jersey. It had its own seawall to contend with, but she felt she had better options for rescue on friendly turf. She didn’t belong in New York, she told herself as she made determined strokes away from Manhattan Island. As the Masked Man often reminded her, an assassin did not invite questions. While killing Thomas Denning was technically a success, she thought as she came up for another breath, the Masked Man would surely call this a failure. She patted her right ear. Her earpiece was still clinging to it. She considered stripping it away and sending it to the bottom of the Hudson as well, but the warning she received about leaving comm devices open to discovery after she killed Matthias Booker caused her to think twice. Diane pulled the earpiece off and shoved it into her front pocket. She took another deep breath and submerged once more.

  Over an hour later, Diane washed up beside the Garden State Seawall. She spat foul-tasting water out and rose to her feet. A police officer shouted to
her from an observation platform. Diane’s feet squished on the rocky shore as she staggered toward a large rock to sit on and rest. She looked across the Hudson at Manhattan. Its iconic skyscrapers glowed against the evening sky. A pair of policemen approached her cautiously from her right, their hands resting on the butt of their sidearms. Diane rolled her eyes and raised her arm. “Pembrook. Panther Division. Friendly.”

  The first officer raised his arm in response. “Sanchez. Fourteenth Precinct. You practicing for a triathlon, or something?”

  “I wish,” she said, panting.

  “Her lips are turning blue, man,” said the second officer. “She needs medical attention pronto.”

  Officer Sanchez nodded. “We’re going to get you fixed up. Panther Division, you said, huh? Where’s that?”

  “West of here,” she said.

  Officer Sanchez gave her a knowing smirk. “West of here, huh? So’s everything else. You zoo animals don’t normally come out this far. Like we’re too good for you or something.”

  His partner patted his shoulder. “Take it easy, man. She’s shaking.”

  “J-just c-cold,” Diane stammered.

  Sanchez batted his partner’s hand away and grudgingly called for an ambulance. He paced around with an air of annoyance as they waited for help to arrive. Once the ambulance was on the scene, two men dressed in black uniforms loaded Diane onto a stretcher and into the back. The driver closed the doors and left Diane alone with his partner. The siren blared and soon she was on her way to the hospital for… the paramedic in the unit didn’t say. He didn’t take any vital signs or call anything in to the local hospital.

  “W-where are we g-going?”

  The man did not reply. He jabbed a syringe in her neck and Diane blacked out. Her unconscious body shook from side to side as the ambulance raced toward the heart of the city.

  Diane awoke in her own bed. She raised her arms in surprise and inspected her wrists. She was shocked to find them unfettered. She put her hand to her forehead. Everything felt normal. She picked up her alarm clock. It read 4:43 A.M. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. She tried to piece together what she remembered about the night before. She recalled the ambulance ride and the injection that put her under. She felt her neck. Other than a jolt of pain at the injection site, she felt fine.

  Diane slipped out of bed and padded into her bathroom. She flicked on the lights and studied herself in the mirror. She was dressed in a set of cream-colored silk pajamas she didn’t remember owning. She removed the top and stared at her bare chest. Other than a few scratches and bruises, she didn’t seem to be much worse for wear. She reached up and fingered her stallion head pendant. The chain had chafed part of her neck, but she figured her shirt collar would cover that up anyway. She jammed her thumbs into her waistband and pulled down her pajama bottoms, then frowned at her naked reflection.

  Diane thought back to her brief time at the makeshift police academy in the days following Arbor Day. When Sapphire pretended to be a lowly administrator and took Diane’s measurements to fit her for an official uniform. That day seemed like a million years ago, now, as Diane stood in her lavish bathroom. She patted her stomach. Her reflection displayed a thin woman in her early 20s, but since that fateful day at the old elementary school, Diane had put on muscle. She rubbed her bare shoulders at the thought of swimming the Hudson. Who did that? Certainly not her, not before Panther. Not before the Masked Man and Lady Diamond and Lyssa in the hospital and oh God what happened to me, Diane thought in a veil of tears.

  Diane dropped to her knees, then sat on her plush bathroom rug. She wiped her eyes with her knuckle and allowed herself time to grieve the loss of Lyssa. Lyssa wasn’t dead, at least not to her knowledge, but Diane hadn’t seen her since Lyssa was poisoned by tainted chocolates provided by Sapphire, or whoever she was. Diane felt a wave of fury rise through her at the thought. Sapphire would pay for this. So would anyone who would keep them apart.

  Diane thought of Lyssa’s parents. Even them? Diane slumped onto the floor. No, she couldn’t blame them for being overprotective. She felt pangs of jealousy that Lyssa had parents, plural. Worse, they cared enough about her to be overprotective. Diane thought about her dead father. He would probably say he cared about his daughter too, but Diane felt like a means to an end. She provided the end. Not the one he hoped for, she surmised.

  Diane picked herself up off the bathroom floor and dressed herself. She padded out to her living room and snapped on the lights. The sight of her well-appointed apartment gave her chills. Was Sapphire paying for it? She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed it wasn’t the case. She wanted to believe this was bought and paid for by the Panther Division. Diane shook her head. That was a lot of parking tickets. She put the thought out of her mind and opened her eyes. She plopped down on her sofa and switched on her monitor.

  Moments later, Diane was stretched out on her sofa watching the final episode of Fortune and Destiny. Alexa Charlevoix and Ruby Ryerson met at a fancy restaurant. Alexa snarled at Ruby and tried to douse her with wine from an empty glass. Ruby called for wine. Alexa sipped it and began to writhe on the floor holding her throat. Jackson, Alexa’s lover, watched helplessly as Alexa took her final breaths as the screen faded to black.

  Diane angrily paused the episode. Ruby was a stand-in for Sapphire, which made Alexa a stand-in for Diane. Ruby Ryerson’s final taunt rang in her ears: Your reputation as a dangerous and cunning woman is vastly overrated. Diane threw her remote at the dim screen. Screw you, you evil bitch, Diane thought. I’ve taken down the worst this city has to offer. It’s just a matter of time before I give you what you deserve.

  Diane fingered her stallion pendant as she thought this. She refused to be bested by someone who didn’t have the guts to use her real name, and—

  The irony hit Diane like a ton of bricks. Diane Pembrook was a made-up name too. So was Lyssa. Diane wondered if anybody really was who they claimed to be. Maybe Lady Diamond, she thought with a smirk. Maybe she’s the realest person of all.

  Diane dismissed her thoughts. She tracked back to the start of Alexa’s final scene in Fortune and Destiny. She paused the scene at random intervals and studied it like fine art. Alexa’s perfectly coiffed hair. Her sleek red dress. The fury in her eyes as she raised her empty wine glass. The flash of fear in Ruby Ryerson’s eyes before realizing the threat of being doused with wine was as empty as Alexa’s sparkling glass. The cruel smile when Ruby realized Alexa had failed to humiliate her in front of everyone in the restaurant.

  Diane looked past the principal characters. She studied the background. Liquor bottles stood in neat rows behind the bar. A bartender poured a cocktail for a single woman perched on a high stool. Her long dark hair hung down over most of her face. Diane shrugged at the sight of her. She never paid attention to the people in the background, and she supposed that was the point. The important people were closest to the camera. Diane thought it summed up real life. She didn’t notice people in the background there, either. They stayed just outside of her side vision, and—

  Diane’s forehead throbbed in pain. She dropped the remote and clutched her aching head. More than ever, she needed to fill a nagging gap in her vocabulary. Side vision. It was technically accurate, but she knew intrinsically there was another word for it. A better word. A smarter word. She racked her brain for the answer, but like Alexa’s wine glass, she came up empty. She looked back at her desk and smacked her forehead.

  A moment later, Diane flopped back down on her sofa with her dictionary. She thumbed through the dog-eared pages in search of the perfect word. After several minutes of fruitless searching, she realized there was more to words than strictly defining them. The dictionary excelled at defining words, if you had a specific word in mind. What about words that meant the same thing? She tried looking up “side vision” to no avail. She settled on “side” and quickly became frustrated with the useless definitions the dictionary dutifully provided. A list of words caught her eye: th
ey were called synonyms. She dimly recalled learning about them back when her father let her go to school. After a few minutes of study, Diane noticed the synonyms were words that could be used instead of “side”, such as “edge”, or a word she hadn’t seen before, “periphery”.

  Diane flipped through her dictionary to the Ps. She found periphery with a thrill, then frowned at the definition: the outer limits of an edge of an area or object. Diane looked up at the frozen scene on her monitor. The woman at the bar was at the edge of the on-screen action. Relative to Alexa, the woman sat in her side vision… Diane squeezed her eyes shut and corrected herself. The woman sat at the periphery of the on-screen action. She rolled that word around on her tongue and nodded with a sense of satisfaction. It sounded much smarter. She looked forward to using it in conversation sometime.

  Diane picked up the remote and began to advance the scene by a few frames. As the scene shifted, so did the woman’s hair behind Alexa. A familiar nose protruded from under it. The woman ran her fingers through her hair and smiled at the bartender. Diane’s jaw dropped at the sight of her. She shook her head and refused to believe her eyes. She let the scene advance in real time. The woman disappeared when the camera angle changed to Ruby Ryerson’s point of view. Diane looked past the scene in the foreground and tried desperately to watch the bar. The bartender wiped a glass with a white cloth. The seat occupied by the mysterious woman stood empty.

  The camera angle changed again; wide-angle this time. Jackson struggled against Ruby’s henchmen. The bar had three people sitting on the right. The bartender stopped taking their drink orders and watched Alexa drop to the floor holding her throat. Diane swore as the scene faded to black. No, bring her back, she thought in a fog of panic.

  According to the time tracker at the bottom of the screen, the mystery woman occupied her seat at the bar for less than five seconds. The people in the background shifted seats, or sides of the table as the scene played out. The mystery woman was there for only those few seconds, never to be seen again. Just like in real life. Diane paused the screen at the precise moment the mystery woman’s face could be seen in full profile. There, smiling behind Diane’s fiery blonde idol, sat none other than the woman she knew only as Sapphire Sorrellis.