Binding Foxgirls II

by Simon Archer

  But then my eyes darted back to the drones and landed on them. A smile spread across my face.

  “That’s it,” I said, pointing at them. “They can take us down. We can hold on to their wings and fly down there.”

  “That’s… mildly terrifying,” Cindra said, eying the drones with distaste. “But then again, so is pretty much everything about this situation, I guess…”

  “Well, that’s our option,” I said.

  “There’s only two of them,” Kira said flatly. “We’ll have to go down two at a time.”

  “Yeah…” I said, gritting my teeth. “Semra, stay here. Cindra, you go down with me first. We’ll send them back up for you guys when we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

  “Why can’t I…?” Semra started to ask, surprised that I had chosen Cindra, who I’d been trying to keep out of harm’s way. She looked surprised too, for what it was worth.

  “I need a trained binder with them, and he’s all busted up,” I said in a low voice to her, but it was no use trying to hide it. They heard.

  “Hey,” Kinley said defensively. “We can take care of ourselves, can’t we, Kira?” But both foxgirls were cracking a smile and laughing.

  Kira gave me a warm smile. “We’re just kidding you, Nic, we’ll be here waiting for your signal. Be careful.”

  “Aren’t I always?” I said, flashing a grin back at her.

  And with that, I reached up for one of the drones. It zoomed down and let me grab it by either side. Cindra stepped forward carefully and did the same with the other drone.

  And then, we were swept off our feet. First, we went up, so I could look down on our teammates below and see them watching up. I stole a glance up, but I couldn’t see far in that direction. Then, we went down.

  Cindra whooped in surprise, responding to the adrenaline rush. I bit my tongue, but despite the situation, I had to admit that it was pretty cool, like some kind of theme park ride on steroids. I loved every second of it. It was an even better adrenaline rush than building hopping up on the surface.

  We went straight down after the first few seconds, and we went fast, air rushing through my hair and standing it on end. I looked around, trying to see. The drones’ red lights shone, but they were dim, and I didn’t dare let go in order to reach for my flashlight.

  In what felt like a long while, but really could’ve only been a few minutes, I felt my feet slam against some kind of smooth pavement. Cindra followed close behind me. The impact was surprising, given that I didn’t see it coming, but the drones were gentle enough, and neither of us fell.

  “Go back up,” I instructed the drones. “Get the others. Kinley and Kira first.” They zoomed back off without a moment’s hesitation.

  “What is this place?” Cindra asked, staring around the area uneasily. I scrambled for my flashlight and shone it around us. It was brighter than the drones’ lights.

  “It’s just another tunnel,” I said, almost disappointed. “Just made out of stone instead of metal.” Sure enough, our surroundings were just dark pavement in every direction. And then, right next to where we stood, train tracks.

  “It must be one of the real tunnels this time,” Cindra said. “Back there was just constructed for these people. This is the real deal.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You haven’t been able to reach Malthe, have you?” she asked, and I shook my head no.

  “I lost the earpiece,” I said regretfully. “Not that it would’ve made much of a difference.”

  “I don’t see any trains,” Cindra said.

  “Me neither,” I agreed, frowning. Just then, the drones reappeared overhead. It had taken less time than I’d thought. A lot less. They dropped Kinley and Kira nearby.

  “What is this place?” Kinley asked immediately.

  “A train tunnel, a real one this time,” I said. Then, to the drones, “Go get the other two.” They zoomed back off, and in a few moments, deposited Semra and Clem on the stone as well.

  While they were gone, I did some more looking around.

  “There must be a place even further below this,” I said. “Malthe said the calls were coming from deep, deeper than the old tunnels. So there must be another one somewhere. A false floor or something.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to go,” Cindra shrugged, pointing behind us. Sure enough, the path ended there, just going upward to where we’d come from. So the only path was forward, following the train tracks.

  “Let’s go then,” I said, shaking my head. Ideally, we’d be walking into all this with a helluva lot more than two drones, a binder with a wrecked leg, and Semra and me, but you can’t always get what you want I supposed.

  No one ran into us for a long while down there. And for a long while, we didn’t run into anyone either. Or anything. Just nothing on all sides, taunting us.

  “Where is he?” Kinley groaned after we’d been doing this for far too long. She kicked the ground in frustration, and I did the same just for the hell of it. But then I realized that there was something different about the two kicks. I exchanged a look with Cindra and realized she, too, knew what I was thinking,

  “Do that again,” I instructed Kinley. “Harder this time.” She kicked the ground for a second time. Then I did the same.

  “Hear that?” I asked everyone. Cindra nodded, though the others just looked confused.

  “Your part is hollow,” Cindra said, a smile spreading across her face. “Or at least there’s something under there.”

  “Exactly,” I grinned. “Let’s blow it up.”

  “Hold on, hold on, hold up,” Clem said, holding up his hands in disbelief. “You want to blow something else up? Cause that’s gone so well for us the previous umpteen times we’ve done that?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” I asked him. Then, glancing at his leg, which was still bleeding, “Don’t worry, you won’t be coming with us. You and Semra stay out here and look for a way out. But the rest of us need to find a way in first.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding…” Semra started to protest, but I held up a hand to stop her.

  “Don’t,” I instructed. “He can’t fight, he’s a liability. And he needs someone who can with him. And the foxgirls fight better when the four of us are together. And we need to find a way out of this fucking place for when things go sour.”

  Semra shut her mouth, realizing this was all true.

  “Now,” I continued, turning my attention to the drones. “Everyone, step back, so our friends here can start cutting.”

  We all made a perimeter around the area, kicking the ground until it didn’t sound hollow anymore just to be safe. Then, I gave the drones the signal. And man, were they happy to get back to blowing shit up with no abandon again.

  First, they moved their lasers along slowly but surely, cutting out segments of the ground like they had with the door. But it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t enough when they kept running into more sediment.

  So they combined their firepower and directed it all at the same place at once, blowing the whole thing into next week.

  The floor cracked and fell, like an earthquake splitting the Earth. Debris fell and filled the whole underground.

  When the rumbling calmed down a bit, I leaned over to look.

  “It’s not that far down,” I said. “We can jump if we’re careful. Semra and Clem, stay here like I told you. I’ll leave one of the drones with you. Try to find a way out.”

  And with that, I focused intently on my bond with the foxgirls, so that they would have my dexterity and strength and not trip either when we jumped. Then, as one, we leapt.

  We fell maybe fifteen feet. The rubble made it difficult to maneuver, but I managed to find a corner that was relatively clear.

  “What is this place?” Cindra asked, looking around wildly. “I don’t see a way out or anything. No doors, nothing. Just walls like a cave.”

  I followed her gaze around the room and saw that she w
as right. It was pretty much exactly like a cave, just full of the rubble we’d filled it with. I turned on my flashlight and walked around. Then, I saw it. A door. Just not where I would’ve expected it to be.

  “Here,” I called, beckoning the foxgirls to come over to me. “It’s a trap door in the ground.”

  I grabbed the handle and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Predictable. I pulled a grenade out of my pocket and motioned for the foxgirls to back up again.

  “Here, step back,” I instructed. I released the grenade and threw it at the thing. It exploded, and some debris from around the door blasted everywhere around us. I covered my face with my arms and kept the foxgirls back with me. But when it was all over, and I approached the door, it was merely scorched, not opened.

  “Damn,” Cindra said, peering at it as well. “That thing’s strong.”

  “It’s a fucking bunker,” I said. “This guy’s hiding out down there while all his people die for him. Typical.” I motioned for the drone to come over and blast the thing itself.

  It took a lot of tries, and for a minute there, I was worried that the drone itself would overheat before the door opened. But eventually, the thing became so burnt and scorched that it popped off its hinges, bent and malformed.

  Cautiously, I approached it, the foxgirls following close behind me. I reached down to move it with my gloved hand, and even through the leather, it burned me from the heat. But it opened. I peered down inside. It was another long jump into a narrow room, far narrower than this one.

  “We won’t all fit,” I told the foxgirls. “Wait up here for me. Fly back up with the drones if I don’t come out in twenty minutes and find a way out with Semra and Clem.” They all started to protest at once, but I gave them a stern look, and they shut up, knowing I was damn well serious.

  And with that, I jumped down the second pit, leaving the drone and the foxgirls behind.

  The bottom was dark and narrow, but dry. It didn’t smell off or moldy. In fact, it was pristinely clean, as if it was professionally cleaned on a regular basis. Maybe it was.

  I stepped forward and made my way down the narrow corridor. There was another door at the end. It was locked, just like the last one. I pursed my lips and looked around. I had no choice but to use the four grenades I had left and see if they would work. Otherwise, I’d have to go back and get the drone, leaving the foxgirls vulnerable.

  But using grenades in such a narrow place would be risky. Even so, I pulled them out of my belt and tossed them one by one at the door, running backward as I did so until I was hugging the back wall. They went off, and fire billowed out around me. But I didn’t get burned. The door caved in, and the fire was sucked back into the room inside.

  It was a bunker. Hesitantly, I pressed forward and went inside. It was small but cozy. The walls were lined with canned and dried food products, and the place was practically burnt out from the grenades, the labels on the cans burning.

  Then, I saw him. Quivering in the back was a man. His jacket was burnt, and his chalk-like skin scorched, but he was still alive.

  “Please…” he quivered. “No…”

  “Get up, you fucking coward,” I scoffed, more disgusted than anything else. All those battles, all those losses, and this was the guy who was in charge? This quivering, cowardly piece of shit? Somehow that just made it all worse.

  I reached out to grab hold of his jacket and drag him back with me for questioning, but I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. He was faking me out. Just as I was about to grab him, he attacked, barreling right into my legs and pulling out a long sword. An actual sword. A real fucking sword, like from medieval times. I hadn’t been expecting that, though I don’t think anyone would’ve.

  He sliced at my midsection, catching me off guard, and opened a long gash across my stomach. I screamed out and clutched the wound, but I pressed through the pain, pulling out my holo knife and swiping back at him.

  I was out of grenades. It was just this guy and me, with the weapons we had left, duking it out.

  It was an awkward fight, at first. Neither of us was in our best shape. But we still managed to land a number of blows against each other, to the point where we were both bloodied and hobbled.

  It got to a point where I was gasping for air, trying to fight this guy off. I kept trying to slice at his sword with my holo knife, but he always managed to dance away from me in time. He was surprisingly graceful for such a large man. He was even taller and broader shouldered than Clem or me.

  We grunted and gasped as we kept going until I finally managed to slip him up. There was a stack of those canned goods next to him where we were fighting then. I faked him out, acting like I was lunging for his sword again, but then I slapped the cans down on the ground, distracting him. Then, I went for his sword, chopping it in half and sending the upper half careening across the room.

  He stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at it for a moment, before realizing that he now had a sharper, blunter edged-weapon to use against me, but I’d anticipated this already. I smacked him across the face, taking advantage of his moment’s hesitation and grabbed hold of his wrist as he stumbled backward, pulling what remained of the sword away from him.

  I then kicked him in the stomach, pushing him back against the remaining cans and held him down to the ground with my knees, my holo knife against his neck as I had done with his goon.

  “Who are you?” I growled. “What are you doing down here?” To my surprise, he laughed, throwing back his head against the cans and guffawing.

  “What do you think, boy?” he asked, spitting out the last word.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “What are you talking about? Tell me who you are! We both know you’re just a coward. Your henchmen put up a better fight than you.”

  “My name is Achilles,” he said simply, and I looked straight into his eyes, as closely into his spirit as I could. He was telling the truth.

  “And what are you doing here? Who are you people?” I asked, not taking my eyes off him.

  “We’re Tibor Enterprises,” he said. “It’s been run by my family for centuries. And I may be a coward, Joch, but I have more power than you’ll ever know.” I laughed at this.

  “Not anymore,” I said. “You’re done. We killed all your goons, and if we find any more, we’ll round ‘em up. The conglomerate’s done.”

  “What a narrow-minded young man, you are, thinking that the city of Termina is where the world begins and ends,” he said, his tone mild, and then he just started laughing his ass off again. I stared blankly at him, and then grabbed hold of his face from either side, trying to steady it so I could look deeper into his soul.

  But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reach him somehow.

  “Oh, that won’t work, boy,” he cackled, spitting out the word again. “You won’t get very far with my kind.”

  “Your kind?” I asked again. “What are you talking about?” And with that, his eyes glazed over, and his body went limp. I felt his pulse. It was still there. He was alive.

  I grabbed hold of the back of his shirt and dragged him behind me all the way back to the pit. I hollered up to the foxgirls, and the drone appeared shortly, carrying Achilles and me up to them.

  “What happened?” Cindra asked me when I appeared. “Is that…?” She pointed at the man.

  “Yes,” I said. “But not now. Let’s get out of here before he wakes up.”

  Together, we dragged him back over to the second opening. To our surprise, the drone didn’t appear. Instead, it was Malthe and Lin, riding on the giant tank with Semra and Clem. It swooped down and grabbed all of us.

  When we got back up, I was shocked to find that the tank had busted through an opening off to the side. We barreled through it, and out into the open air. I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized we were back right where we started, near TelCorp headquarters.

  “What happened?” Cindra asked again when we were back down by the other binders.

  “
I’m not entirely sure,” I said, shaking my head. “We’ve won for now. It’s done. We’ll throw this asshole in the Void and try to get him to talk later. But Cindra, I can’t do a soul gaze on him. Not a real one, anyway. I could only get an inch deep, far enough to know he told me the truth, but not far enough to be able to figure out anything he wasn’t telling me.”

  “Okay,” Cindra said carefully, “but what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, setting my mouth in a thin line. “But something he said… well, it made me think there’s more to all this. That he has contacts outside of Termina somehow.”

  “Outside of Termina?” Clem repeated. “That’s impossible. There’s nothing outside Termina, just some farms, rural areas. All the world’s business comes from here, and most of its water, anyway. He must have been messing with you.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. But I wasn’t quite so sure. “I don’t know. We’ll have to interrogate him sometime tomorrow. For now, let’s just enjoy the win.”

  All the binders came clustering around us by then, cheering and slapping us on the back. Slowly, my face broke out into a grin, and I wrapped my free arm, the one not holding Achilles, around Cindra’s shoulders.

  “We’re free,” I told her, meeting her eyes. “We won. We got our city back. Everyone’s safe now.”

  “I know,” she said, looking straight back at me. And just as law enforcement began swarming us to collect Achilles and take him to the Void, she reached up and kissed me.

  35

  Achilles Tibor

  I woke up late that night, in a cell that I paid for. Well, I suppose it was mine again, in a manner of speaking.

  My entire body ached. But my ego ached more. I had to admit that I’d underestimated Nic Joch and his version of TelCorp.

  But he’d also underestimated me.

  They’d stripped me of my clothing and belongings and put me in dark striped prison garments. But there was something they’d missed.

  I pressed a finger under my shirt, right around my collar bone. It took me a few minutes to find it, but it was there. As it always was. I pushed down and pressed the beacon.