Ariana shuffled into the valet cabin and sat down on the spartan stool provided for her "comfort": another night shift for her. The polyester blouse of her uniform was sweaty and sticky from standing in the sun all day. In her favor, night shift usually came with far less work. All it took to survive one was to stay awake and be there in the unlikely event that someone would want their car in the middle of the night; the management had thoughtfully provided an old radio for said purpose. Its antenna was a mangled piece of wire, attuned to 94 FM - and only 94 FM - through strange, unknown sacrifices to dark gods. The construction itself seemed to be shaped like a scream from beyond, a terrifying pact to archieve crystal-clear reception of one radio station despite vastly unfavorable geography.
Just as she had settled down, she watched two figures stumble into the parking lot: two large men. One clutched his hastily-bandaged shoulder, while the other carried a body in his arms. Her attempt to reach for the phone was cut off when the first man raised his good arm, leveling a gun at her. From this point on, Ariana's rather weak impulse to protect the cars of strangers shot straight to zero; she raised her hands, stepped outside the booth and said nothing when Mark Simmons raided the key storage, grabbing a cluster of Remote Keyless Entry gadgets. Mark stepped outside, briefly rifled through the fobs and picked out one. He pressed the "open" button and noticed nearby headlights coming on; John ran off toward the car - a Mercedes S 65 AMG - to transfer Rowena to the back seat, while Mark stepped up to Ariana. He briefly sought eye contact, but looked away when she tried to reply in kind.
"Sorry," he said; Ariana gave him a forced little smile. Consequently, he briefly switched his USP to the injured left arm, then knocked the valet into next sunrise with a hammer punch. That done, he jogged off towards the car, popped the driver's door open and sat down.
"North!" Done said, one eye on Rowena and one ear to the cellphone in his hands; Mark nodded, slammed the door closed, fired up the ignition and drove the car off the lot.
And Ariana? Well, her shift was over.
---
Every "secret agent" fiber of John Done wanted to object to Mark's driving style; the Enforcer regarded the sidewalk as another lane for the purpose of taking those complicated corners. The light traffic was helping them, of course, but Mark had a distinct "drive it like you stole it" flavor to his stunts that made them stick out a bit more than Done was comfortable with.
Then again, Done's goddaughter was currently bleeding all over the backseat. This wasn't the right time for obeying the speed limit.
"Keep going for another mile, then..."
"Do you have a street address?" Mark shouted, downshifting to third gear to evade a column of cars stopped at a red light ahead.
"What?" Done said.
"Street address!" Mark replied. "This thing's got a navi."
"You ever use a navi?"
"...good point."
Red & blue lights behind them; Done had to admit that he was feeling a bit agitated. Mark was arguably taking it worse; between the blood loss, the adrenaline and his generally fiery temper, he was as close to losing his shit as he was likely to get.
"Scare 'em!" he shouted.
"Need both my hands here!" Done replied.
Mark growled, a small patch of graying hair in the back officially elevating his look to "wolf". With wanton disregard for the car, Mark yanked the parking brake and angled the wheel, sliding the car to a stop with a 90 degree turn into the middle of an intersection. Fired up as he could be, Mark slammed the USP against the car window, splintering it out of his way; that done, he stuck the gun out and opened fire on the cop car. Given the bullet in Mark's shoulder, this wasn't a very pleasant experience. The cop car slid to a stop. Mark dropped the mag from his gun and cried out "Killer!" to Done; the mercenary grabbed an unmarked hunk of metal from his coat and handed it to Mark, who slammed it into his USP's magazine well and then threw the gun at the cop car. Without missing a beat, Mark tortured the throttle again and sped off.
It took the police officers a few seconds to gather the courage to get out of the car; none of Mark's shots had found their target, but it had gotten them to stop, and they weren't about to chase down armed suspects when they had a gun to secure and heavy backup to call in. Cautiously, they approached the dropped USP. Owing to the toughness of the weapon's construction, the drop had only inflicted cosmetic damage - but in the stark night, there was a quite obvious light coming from within the pistol. The officers suspected an explosive and kept their distance; however, all that did was ensure that the thermite charge introduced to the USP's internals would finish the job.
In a minute, there'd be no more evidence. Just slag.
---
"That was obvious..." Done remarked; Mark now replied only in shouting, partly to reflect his mood, partly to shout ever the increased noise from the broken window.
"Had to lose them!"
"What about their backup?"
"We're almost there. I'll drop you off and lead them away."
"You're bleeding."
"That's my problem."
Mark yanked the brakes again, coming to a screeching stop. No more words were exchanged; he watched Done carry Rowena in the direction of the safe house for a brief moment, then peeled off again.
Behind him, more red and blue. Mark stepped on it; with a terrible screech, he sent the Mercedes into a powerslide onto Rua das Laranjas and thundered westward. A scant few seconds later, Mark took another corner and headed North, still pursued by two cop cars. On the open road, the more powerful BMW had a slight edge, and Mark gained some distance from his pursuers. The car screamed into the Santa Barbara Tunnel - not the wisest move, Mark had to admit, but without knowing the streets here, navigation was a crap shoot anyway. He desperately hoped that there were no more cops at the other end of the tunnel. The bleeding from his shoulder was getting worse.
One of those days.
---
The engine's purr turned into a roar; the Mercedes was in fifth gear and still accelerating, screaming down the highway as the neon non-darkness inside the tunnel was swapped for a clear dark sky outside. Mark had found the time to fiddle with some of the controls and somehow activated the car's night vision system; considering that and the street lamps, he killed his own lights, hoping to draw less attention.
To be fair, it wasn't a bad plan. It might have worked better if he hadn't been doing 150 miles per hour in a stolen luxury sports car.
Mark had to slow his roll (literally) to dodge through some traffic ahead; the semi-automatic transmission did its best to follow his maneuvers, and Mark knew better than to mess with it. He knew that staying on the highway was only going to draw attention to him, but speed was all he had - if he got lost in the side alleys, that'd be it, no escape. He was cutting it way too close - the car tugged his safety belt tighter, its electronics preparing for an imminent crash. He dodged past a swerving truck and accelerated again, speeding past an off-ramp and over a rail line. The flashing lights had long disappeared from behind him, unable to keep up, and Mark took that as his cue to slow down slightly. He switched the car to cruise control and fought the multi-function display for a few seconds before bringing up the navigational system.
You are here, Mark thought as the car hooked into the ether, creeping into the very frontier of microwaves to fish out an L2C GPS signal at a rough 1.2 Gigahertz. Soon thereafter, he had a name - Viaduto Sao Pedro - and a traffic congestion warning ahead. He snuck into the roundabout ahead, circled a tiny bit and took the very next exit, heading East once more. The car slowed to a crawl beside a small pharmacy; Mark parked it, opened the door and stumbled out. The blood loss and the sudden activity made his eyes water. Still, he managed to half-walk, half-drag himself up to the pharmacy's door. Once there, he ripped off some cloth from his t-shirt and wrapped it around his right fist like a crude bandage, then clenched his teeth and punched through the glass.
His fist was bloodied. He was reasonably sure that he'd cracked a knuckle. But the door was open.
---
Mark grabbed a shopping basket from the corner and set to looting the place for what it was worth. He swiped bandages and wound dressings, a complete first aid kit and several bottles of painkillers, plus some other potentially helpful drugs. He felt a brief attack of conscience at the blatant robbery, but his bleeding shoulder dispelled all attempts at ethical behaviour.
Some days, God's justice is swift. The next thing Mark knew, he was staring down the dual barrels of a break-action shotgun.
"Parada!", it came from the 30-year old face behind the shotgun - a scrawny young man of both questionable grooming and questionable firearms technique. Mark thought that he fully deserved this - after all, what kind of business did he have in the one Latin American country where they don't speak Spanish?
"I don't speak Portuguese," he finally said.
"Do not move!" the shopkeeper replied, still not quite in control of the longarm. "I have trapped you. There is no escape!"
One of the great many somethings in Mark snapped in half; still bleeding and distinctly light-headed, the Enforcer got up and walked up to the man.
"One," Mark said, "you don't wait for a man to walk up to you like that. If you wanted to shoot me, I'd be dead. Two, I'm pretty sure that gun is illegal..."
The moment of shock and confusion was enough for Mark to work with; lashing out with more speed than a man with his injuries should have, he smacked the gun aside, snatched it with his bloodied right hand and twisted it right out of the shopkeeper's hand. A quick showy spin later, the situation was reversed, leaving Mark to aim the gun at the shopkeeper.
"Three...aw, fuck it. Not clever enough now. Fix my shoulder."
It's amazing how quickly one can suture and dress a wound when threatened with a shotgun; five minutes later, the wound was taken care of, although Mark still felt dizzy - the painkillers didn't help.
"I'm keeping this," he said, then left the pharmacy with a basket full of medical supplies and a loaded shotgun.
Rio held its collective breath.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Just 'cause - Chapter 18 - Heads Explode
If there was one thing Rowena couldn't seem to get used to, it was the slow agony of peeling off bloodied wound dressing. Coagulated blood had bonded to both the dressing itself and the bandages used to hold them. It was a fascinating thing to watch her skin stretch slightly before the force was enough to seperate it from the medical gauze, but it was painful in that annoying way that heightened her skin's sensitivity to an unbearable factor. It gave her goosebumps when she cleaned the wounds with cold water, and every dab with the towel elicited a new small grunt of discomfort.
There were still some red spots on the towel when she was done. She'd definately have to take it easy the next few days.
In comparison to that, redressing the wounds was almost pleasant. The first aid kit from the chopper still served as the medicine cabinet for Rowena, but it was well-stocked with everything she needed for her own short-term care. The new bandages were fresh and soothing, though - as always - they felt too tight even as she was tying them. Finally done with that, she slipped into a fresh tanktop, walked out of the bathroom and switched off the light inside. Per Mark's recommendation, she treated herself to a tablet's worth of painkillers - mmmh, that paracetamol taste in her mouth to keep the iron-esque flavor of blood company. She chased it with a glass of water and sat down on the bed, waiting to feel better. Mark had thoughtfully provided a new firearm for her - a brand-new Five-seveN, USG (United States Government) model. External safety, single-action/double-action trigger.
Field-stripping the pistol was automatic; she racked the slide back slightly, pushed the takedown lever and pulled the slide off the gun's body. Rowena saw that the gun was clean - well, as far she could tell in that light without a magnifying glass. She reassembled the firearm and dry-fired it once - a satisfying click from the striking hammer echoed through her skull.
This is your tool, Rowena.
Use it wisely.
---
There was something like a knock on the door; she put the guns into the back of her pants, gangster style, and walked up. Her right knee felt off - probably strained a muscle or two in the fight, she thought, and added a new cold treatment to her to-do list -, but she made it to the door and swung it open, expecting Mark or the room service or maybe Queen Victoria - well, somebody.
She slammed it back against the frame in anger.
Stumbling back toward the bed, she allowed herself to collapse onto the sheets. All she wanted to do was sleep, shut her eyes, sleep this country off and wake up at home, or - failing that - New York City. Some place where she could feel safe.
Schwester...
It would've taken a high-speed camera to fully appreciate the depth of Rowena's reflex, but she had the gun loaded and ready to fire in the blink of an eye. Looking around and listening for further sounds, she backed herself into a corner - admittedly, not the best tactic, but the best she could do against an invisible attacker. Where the hell had the Hand gotten stealth suits?
Then, suddenly, nothing happened.
Rowena took a step into the room and began to sweep it, checking under the bed (she had to keep herself from laughing at that one) and the bathroom, but found nothing. Remembering Freyr's inhuman agility, she grabbed an errant broom with her left hand and started to swipe it through the air as fast and as unpredictable as she could make it.
Schwester...
That came from behind her - she whipped her body around, banging the broomstick against the wall without finding anything else. She stumbled backwards, backing away from the attacker, until she bumped into something and tumbled to the ground. Moaning from the pain of reopened wounds, she dropped the broom, raised herself back on shaky feet and shambled into the bathroom. The neon light over the mirror flickered menacingly when she put her hands onto the sink, desperate for something to rest her weight on. The dizziness was getting worse; she managed to open up the faucet, felt something wet on her forehead and reached up.
When her hand came back down, it was bloody. She dipped it into the torrent of cold water, half-laughing from her personal experience with that particular trope, but she felt more blood trickle down from her forehead and looked up to inspect the damage. Mirror-Rowena gave her a toothy grin and let her leather-gloved hands tap against the glassy surface between them, leaving bloody handprints in thin air.
Startled, Rowena stumbled backwards, hitting the wall and feeling the impact of the gun in her waistband against her back. Everything in her was on fire, especially her hands - she looked down and saw them red, not from the blood on them, but the blood in them. The small cuts on her arm were widening while she watched and oozing blood, too. Scenarios played through her head: a panicked, overtrained mind desperately trying to assemble the disparate information into a conspiracy theory, so to speak. What could it be? Some sort of weapon? Freyr with a stealth suit and a blood prong, she thought, then stumbled outside and went for the first aid kit; without further thought, she grabbed an Atropine auto-injector and stabbed it into her thigh.
"How's life for you, robot?" Mirror-Rowena asked; she was now lying on the bed, without a coat, and wearing preciously little but a corsage and a leather mini-skirt in matching black, with a fishnet shirt over her torso and the customary leather gloves on her hands.
Black grease coursed through her veins, poison redlining it on the highway to her heart. With futile gestures, she tried to stem the flood, her senses sharpened to a degree where she could actually see the heartbeat that carried the atropine upward. Then it was in her chest, and for a second there was nothing, no breathing, no pain.
Her fingernails were bleeding. This time, Rowena screamed.
---
Something pierced Mark's eardrum, too quick and high-pitched to be reliably identified, but it stirred an instinct in him that he didn't know he had. He snapped up his USP and stalked off, that fatal switch thrown in his head with hardly a rational thought in its way. It was no fault of his own; it was in his blood, his genes, passed down from a long line of warriors before him.
Protect.
---
"How the mighty have fallen," Mirror-Rowena purred, still lounging on the bed; before her, Rowena was crawling on the floor, trying to claw her way back into the light. The light above flickered, alternating her view of the world between frozen and blurry. She reached out for the first aid kit, but then the pressure in her knee forced her hands to clutch it. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a small voice kept telling her that holding your wounds does not make the pain go away. But like a child in a thunderstorm, there was that little divide between knowing and believing that kept her from letting go.
Then, Rowena was on her back, her mirror image above her with a wicked upward slant of her mouth and an animal gleam in her eyes.
"I'm dressed like a whore. What does that say about you?"
Before Rowena could fight it, she got her first kiss. It was warm and wet and lingered on her lips long after it was over, freezing the chaos and the pain around them in nothingness. Rowena looked up at the image, unsure of what to say - if, indeed, there was anything that could be said. The image licked her lips, adding another glossy film of saliva to the vibrant red lipstick on her face. The color was unbearably intense; Rowena smelled cherries, like that Turin orchard from years past.
"You can have it all," came a new voice: Rowena cocked her head to the side to see her father resting his weight on that ornate cane of his. She saw herself - still a child, she thought, but how much had she grown? - being carried on Trinity's shoulders, picking cherries from the trees and collecting them in her summer dress. She remembered how she'd ruined it that day.
No, she hadn't. No cherries there yet. Still blossoming.
She turned around, alone in the orchard, lost in an ocean of cherry blossoms those are on japanese cherry trees shut up shut up! and engulfed in a white storm of petals. Grown up, still wearing the summer dress. All white...
"You can't stay here," Daddy said; she looked down onto her dress. Red stains...
The sky bled, staining the never-falling cherry blossoms with red drops. The drops repelled by the surface those are lotus blossoms now i know shut up. She started to run.
---
Mark found Rowena's door locked; for a split second, some measure of propriety climbed on top of the heap in Mark's head and told him to knock first, dammit. After all, it went on to suggest, Rowena could be undressed or in a bad mood or doing...well, woman stuff. Mark had to roll his eyes at himself as he knocked - when had he ever needed good manners?
"Rowena? Are you okay? I thought I heard you shouting..."
She's in her pajamas, he thought. Ah, if even that. She's in her undies, trying to sleep, and you just try to waltz in. She'll knock you into next Wednesday and she'll be damn fucking right, too.
Mark knocked again.
There's gonna be pain, he thought. But he had to be sure.
"Rowena? I'm coming in now!"
Not the face, not the face...
---
Rowena knew how to run. There's a secret to running, she had learned, and it involved setting one foot before the other in a manner not entirely disconnected from walking. This was a morale-bolstering piece of information for Rowena, because she had learnt how to walk and was now eager to apply those lessons in a new manner. She set her counterweights - those sticks of ligament and bone, clad in flesh, that people called arms - in motion and took a step forward. The ground thundered beneath her feet as the atoms of her shoe crashed into the atoms of the ground, decelerating her foot and sending a shockwave rippling up through her leg. And what is a leg, if not a biomechanical shock absorber of the highest caliber? Things became compressed, moved in concert, soaked up kinetic energy into potential energy, dissipated the impact until there was but the merest bit of force applied to her knee.
It exploded in pain.
There's a moment of clarity when you stumble; Rowena lived a whole life in one of them, knowing the terrible certainty of hitting the ground. The laws of physics would budge for no man, no girl, no monster. Time thawed just to let her perceive the movement of her head relative to the ground; with eyes wide open, she hit the dirt.
Her look shot up to Daddy, who still stood, unmoving.
"I can't stay here, either," he said; Rowena watched in horror as the white petals folded into tiny projectiles, enhancing their beauty and deadliness by a thousandfold. A swarm of immaculate, unbearable white insects rode the wind through the orchand and cut Daddy into ribbons; Rowena somehow managed to unstick herself from the picture and got back on her feet, then hobbled over to the bloody remains of her father, all bloody and dirty and beautiful. She felt her legs disintegrate under her; almost at the body, she stumbled over some unseen obstacle and shattered against the ground like glass.
---
Just like old times, Mark thought, racked the slide on his USP and gave the hotel door a well-deserved kick.
A note to aspiring hitmen: there are few things as contraindicated as trying to kick in a door of unknown strength in a time-critical phase of your mission. Aside from the fact that it is a loud and obvious thing to do, it is also far from certain: some doors will gladly absorb five kicks or more, others will be deadbolted and thus completely immune to your charms, and yet a different breed of door exists for whom the very concept of a lock is irredeemably flawed, as they will splinter on impact and trap your foot. Mark recalled one such accident; shooting his target down the hallway with his foot stuck in the door to the bathroom was, undoubtedly, not one of his finer moments.
The door flew open obediently: nobody said that practice in the "kick doors open" department wasn't helpful.
Rowena was, indeed, in the room, crying and bleeding from her wounds. Worse, she had her gun. Mark stepped in, and for some reason he would be unable to articulate for the rest of his life to his own satisfaction, he stepped in with his USP raised.
---
"...and that takes us right back to where we left off," the mirror image said; Rowena was back on her feet, at least, but still helpless to resist the caresses of her shadow. The temptress took a step back, gave her a crooked grin and then stabbed her leather-gloved hand into Rowena's chest. The girl gasped; the shadow still grinned.
"I'm tired of this 'blood of the innocent' crap," the shadow said. "I say, true innocence does not bleed. True innocence is light. Do you see it?"
Rowena raised her hands in protest to find that she was, indeed, light. She could see the blood, the wickedness and the pain drain out of her system, leaving behind only the transmuted veil of photos, vague in shape but pure in purpose.
"This is your pain, Rowena," the shadow said, its voice deep; when she looked up again, the monstrous visage of Mark was grinning at her. "This is our pain," he said.
Rowena found the weight of the gun in her hand oddly comforting. Something...real...to cling to.
"This is your tool, Rowena," the shadow said. "Use it wisely."
---
Mark watched in horror as Rowena raised the gun in her hand to a firing stance; in response, he clicked his own safety off.
"You don't wanna do this, Rowena. Trust me. I don't hesitate. I'm faster," Mark said. He made it sound like it was a fundamental axion of reality, as if a world where Rowena could shoot first would make no sense at all and offend the very idea of reality. Unfortunately, Mark wasn't remotely sure about that.
Nothing in her eyes. There was nothing in her eyes that said anything about what she was thinking. Was she listening at all?
---
The shadow stayed silent while Rowena readied her weapon. The safety was smooth as it released the gun's hammer to the vagaries of a life in service to the trigger.
---
"Goddammit, kiddo! Don't make me do this!" Mark sneered as he watched Rowena click her safety off in response. His left hand slowly snaked out for her gun, hoping to turn it away in the moment of truth - but that was, pardon the pun, a long shot.
---
"What are you waiting for?" the shadow asked.
"I'm not this is crazy think Rowena think sure what to do."
"Pull the trigger, Rowena. The first thing you learned."
---
Mark's finger moved the trigger, millimeter by terrifying millimeter. He knew when his gun would fire. He prayed it wouldn't.
---
There was a flaw in Rowena's body of light, an imperfection, a crack, a mold, a virus. It began in her brain, and then it spread out, contaminating her, diluting her clarity and corrupting her very soul. It was a sentence, bubbled up from deep below where she had buried her old self.
A still fighter is a dead fighter.
"I'm standing still," she said, and for the first time in God knows how long, she could hear herself in the distance.
---
"I'm standing still," Rowena said. Mark gave her a look.
"For God's sake, Rowena, STAND DOWN."
"Stand...standing still."
---
Rowena lowered her weapon.
"A still fighter is a dead fighter. You tried to steal that from me."
"You must give it up," the shadow said.
"It is mine."
Without warning, Rowena's hand shot out and grabbed the shadow by its heart. She could feel the pain and misery flowing back into herself as the image before her screamed in terror.
"Daddy said I could have it all," she said. "And now you die. Goodbye."
---
"A still fighter is a dead fighter," Rowena said, her gun unwavering. "You tried to steal that from me."
"What the...Rowena, what are you talking about?"
"It is mine!" she cried; Mark had no reply.
"Daddy said I could have it all," she said, a single tear on her cheek. "And now you die. Goodbye."
Two shots.
There were still some red spots on the towel when she was done. She'd definately have to take it easy the next few days.
In comparison to that, redressing the wounds was almost pleasant. The first aid kit from the chopper still served as the medicine cabinet for Rowena, but it was well-stocked with everything she needed for her own short-term care. The new bandages were fresh and soothing, though - as always - they felt too tight even as she was tying them. Finally done with that, she slipped into a fresh tanktop, walked out of the bathroom and switched off the light inside. Per Mark's recommendation, she treated herself to a tablet's worth of painkillers - mmmh, that paracetamol taste in her mouth to keep the iron-esque flavor of blood company. She chased it with a glass of water and sat down on the bed, waiting to feel better. Mark had thoughtfully provided a new firearm for her - a brand-new Five-seveN, USG (United States Government) model. External safety, single-action/double-action trigger.
Field-stripping the pistol was automatic; she racked the slide back slightly, pushed the takedown lever and pulled the slide off the gun's body. Rowena saw that the gun was clean - well, as far she could tell in that light without a magnifying glass. She reassembled the firearm and dry-fired it once - a satisfying click from the striking hammer echoed through her skull.
This is your tool, Rowena.
Use it wisely.
---
There was something like a knock on the door; she put the guns into the back of her pants, gangster style, and walked up. Her right knee felt off - probably strained a muscle or two in the fight, she thought, and added a new cold treatment to her to-do list -, but she made it to the door and swung it open, expecting Mark or the room service or maybe Queen Victoria - well, somebody.
She slammed it back against the frame in anger.
Stumbling back toward the bed, she allowed herself to collapse onto the sheets. All she wanted to do was sleep, shut her eyes, sleep this country off and wake up at home, or - failing that - New York City. Some place where she could feel safe.
Schwester...
It would've taken a high-speed camera to fully appreciate the depth of Rowena's reflex, but she had the gun loaded and ready to fire in the blink of an eye. Looking around and listening for further sounds, she backed herself into a corner - admittedly, not the best tactic, but the best she could do against an invisible attacker. Where the hell had the Hand gotten stealth suits?
Then, suddenly, nothing happened.
Rowena took a step into the room and began to sweep it, checking under the bed (she had to keep herself from laughing at that one) and the bathroom, but found nothing. Remembering Freyr's inhuman agility, she grabbed an errant broom with her left hand and started to swipe it through the air as fast and as unpredictable as she could make it.
Schwester...
That came from behind her - she whipped her body around, banging the broomstick against the wall without finding anything else. She stumbled backwards, backing away from the attacker, until she bumped into something and tumbled to the ground. Moaning from the pain of reopened wounds, she dropped the broom, raised herself back on shaky feet and shambled into the bathroom. The neon light over the mirror flickered menacingly when she put her hands onto the sink, desperate for something to rest her weight on. The dizziness was getting worse; she managed to open up the faucet, felt something wet on her forehead and reached up.
When her hand came back down, it was bloody. She dipped it into the torrent of cold water, half-laughing from her personal experience with that particular trope, but she felt more blood trickle down from her forehead and looked up to inspect the damage. Mirror-Rowena gave her a toothy grin and let her leather-gloved hands tap against the glassy surface between them, leaving bloody handprints in thin air.
Startled, Rowena stumbled backwards, hitting the wall and feeling the impact of the gun in her waistband against her back. Everything in her was on fire, especially her hands - she looked down and saw them red, not from the blood on them, but the blood in them. The small cuts on her arm were widening while she watched and oozing blood, too. Scenarios played through her head: a panicked, overtrained mind desperately trying to assemble the disparate information into a conspiracy theory, so to speak. What could it be? Some sort of weapon? Freyr with a stealth suit and a blood prong, she thought, then stumbled outside and went for the first aid kit; without further thought, she grabbed an Atropine auto-injector and stabbed it into her thigh.
"How's life for you, robot?" Mirror-Rowena asked; she was now lying on the bed, without a coat, and wearing preciously little but a corsage and a leather mini-skirt in matching black, with a fishnet shirt over her torso and the customary leather gloves on her hands.
Black grease coursed through her veins, poison redlining it on the highway to her heart. With futile gestures, she tried to stem the flood, her senses sharpened to a degree where she could actually see the heartbeat that carried the atropine upward. Then it was in her chest, and for a second there was nothing, no breathing, no pain.
Her fingernails were bleeding. This time, Rowena screamed.
---
Something pierced Mark's eardrum, too quick and high-pitched to be reliably identified, but it stirred an instinct in him that he didn't know he had. He snapped up his USP and stalked off, that fatal switch thrown in his head with hardly a rational thought in its way. It was no fault of his own; it was in his blood, his genes, passed down from a long line of warriors before him.
Protect.
---
"How the mighty have fallen," Mirror-Rowena purred, still lounging on the bed; before her, Rowena was crawling on the floor, trying to claw her way back into the light. The light above flickered, alternating her view of the world between frozen and blurry. She reached out for the first aid kit, but then the pressure in her knee forced her hands to clutch it. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a small voice kept telling her that holding your wounds does not make the pain go away. But like a child in a thunderstorm, there was that little divide between knowing and believing that kept her from letting go.
Then, Rowena was on her back, her mirror image above her with a wicked upward slant of her mouth and an animal gleam in her eyes.
"I'm dressed like a whore. What does that say about you?"
Before Rowena could fight it, she got her first kiss. It was warm and wet and lingered on her lips long after it was over, freezing the chaos and the pain around them in nothingness. Rowena looked up at the image, unsure of what to say - if, indeed, there was anything that could be said. The image licked her lips, adding another glossy film of saliva to the vibrant red lipstick on her face. The color was unbearably intense; Rowena smelled cherries, like that Turin orchard from years past.
"You can have it all," came a new voice: Rowena cocked her head to the side to see her father resting his weight on that ornate cane of his. She saw herself - still a child, she thought, but how much had she grown? - being carried on Trinity's shoulders, picking cherries from the trees and collecting them in her summer dress. She remembered how she'd ruined it that day.
No, she hadn't. No cherries there yet. Still blossoming.
She turned around, alone in the orchard, lost in an ocean of cherry blossoms those are on japanese cherry trees shut up shut up! and engulfed in a white storm of petals. Grown up, still wearing the summer dress. All white...
"You can't stay here," Daddy said; she looked down onto her dress. Red stains...
The sky bled, staining the never-falling cherry blossoms with red drops. The drops repelled by the surface those are lotus blossoms now i know shut up. She started to run.
---
Mark found Rowena's door locked; for a split second, some measure of propriety climbed on top of the heap in Mark's head and told him to knock first, dammit. After all, it went on to suggest, Rowena could be undressed or in a bad mood or doing...well, woman stuff. Mark had to roll his eyes at himself as he knocked - when had he ever needed good manners?
"Rowena? Are you okay? I thought I heard you shouting..."
She's in her pajamas, he thought. Ah, if even that. She's in her undies, trying to sleep, and you just try to waltz in. She'll knock you into next Wednesday and she'll be damn fucking right, too.
Mark knocked again.
There's gonna be pain, he thought. But he had to be sure.
"Rowena? I'm coming in now!"
Not the face, not the face...
---
Rowena knew how to run. There's a secret to running, she had learned, and it involved setting one foot before the other in a manner not entirely disconnected from walking. This was a morale-bolstering piece of information for Rowena, because she had learnt how to walk and was now eager to apply those lessons in a new manner. She set her counterweights - those sticks of ligament and bone, clad in flesh, that people called arms - in motion and took a step forward. The ground thundered beneath her feet as the atoms of her shoe crashed into the atoms of the ground, decelerating her foot and sending a shockwave rippling up through her leg. And what is a leg, if not a biomechanical shock absorber of the highest caliber? Things became compressed, moved in concert, soaked up kinetic energy into potential energy, dissipated the impact until there was but the merest bit of force applied to her knee.
It exploded in pain.
There's a moment of clarity when you stumble; Rowena lived a whole life in one of them, knowing the terrible certainty of hitting the ground. The laws of physics would budge for no man, no girl, no monster. Time thawed just to let her perceive the movement of her head relative to the ground; with eyes wide open, she hit the dirt.
Her look shot up to Daddy, who still stood, unmoving.
"I can't stay here, either," he said; Rowena watched in horror as the white petals folded into tiny projectiles, enhancing their beauty and deadliness by a thousandfold. A swarm of immaculate, unbearable white insects rode the wind through the orchand and cut Daddy into ribbons; Rowena somehow managed to unstick herself from the picture and got back on her feet, then hobbled over to the bloody remains of her father, all bloody and dirty and beautiful. She felt her legs disintegrate under her; almost at the body, she stumbled over some unseen obstacle and shattered against the ground like glass.
---
Just like old times, Mark thought, racked the slide on his USP and gave the hotel door a well-deserved kick.
A note to aspiring hitmen: there are few things as contraindicated as trying to kick in a door of unknown strength in a time-critical phase of your mission. Aside from the fact that it is a loud and obvious thing to do, it is also far from certain: some doors will gladly absorb five kicks or more, others will be deadbolted and thus completely immune to your charms, and yet a different breed of door exists for whom the very concept of a lock is irredeemably flawed, as they will splinter on impact and trap your foot. Mark recalled one such accident; shooting his target down the hallway with his foot stuck in the door to the bathroom was, undoubtedly, not one of his finer moments.
The door flew open obediently: nobody said that practice in the "kick doors open" department wasn't helpful.
Rowena was, indeed, in the room, crying and bleeding from her wounds. Worse, she had her gun. Mark stepped in, and for some reason he would be unable to articulate for the rest of his life to his own satisfaction, he stepped in with his USP raised.
---
"...and that takes us right back to where we left off," the mirror image said; Rowena was back on her feet, at least, but still helpless to resist the caresses of her shadow. The temptress took a step back, gave her a crooked grin and then stabbed her leather-gloved hand into Rowena's chest. The girl gasped; the shadow still grinned.
"I'm tired of this 'blood of the innocent' crap," the shadow said. "I say, true innocence does not bleed. True innocence is light. Do you see it?"
Rowena raised her hands in protest to find that she was, indeed, light. She could see the blood, the wickedness and the pain drain out of her system, leaving behind only the transmuted veil of photos, vague in shape but pure in purpose.
"This is your pain, Rowena," the shadow said, its voice deep; when she looked up again, the monstrous visage of Mark was grinning at her. "This is our pain," he said.
Rowena found the weight of the gun in her hand oddly comforting. Something...real...to cling to.
"This is your tool, Rowena," the shadow said. "Use it wisely."
---
Mark watched in horror as Rowena raised the gun in her hand to a firing stance; in response, he clicked his own safety off.
"You don't wanna do this, Rowena. Trust me. I don't hesitate. I'm faster," Mark said. He made it sound like it was a fundamental axion of reality, as if a world where Rowena could shoot first would make no sense at all and offend the very idea of reality. Unfortunately, Mark wasn't remotely sure about that.
Nothing in her eyes. There was nothing in her eyes that said anything about what she was thinking. Was she listening at all?
---
The shadow stayed silent while Rowena readied her weapon. The safety was smooth as it released the gun's hammer to the vagaries of a life in service to the trigger.
---
"Goddammit, kiddo! Don't make me do this!" Mark sneered as he watched Rowena click her safety off in response. His left hand slowly snaked out for her gun, hoping to turn it away in the moment of truth - but that was, pardon the pun, a long shot.
---
"What are you waiting for?" the shadow asked.
"I'm not this is crazy think Rowena think sure what to do."
"Pull the trigger, Rowena. The first thing you learned."
---
Mark's finger moved the trigger, millimeter by terrifying millimeter. He knew when his gun would fire. He prayed it wouldn't.
---
There was a flaw in Rowena's body of light, an imperfection, a crack, a mold, a virus. It began in her brain, and then it spread out, contaminating her, diluting her clarity and corrupting her very soul. It was a sentence, bubbled up from deep below where she had buried her old self.
A still fighter is a dead fighter.
"I'm standing still," she said, and for the first time in God knows how long, she could hear herself in the distance.
---
"I'm standing still," Rowena said. Mark gave her a look.
"For God's sake, Rowena, STAND DOWN."
"Stand...standing still."
---
Rowena lowered her weapon.
"A still fighter is a dead fighter. You tried to steal that from me."
"You must give it up," the shadow said.
"It is mine."
Without warning, Rowena's hand shot out and grabbed the shadow by its heart. She could feel the pain and misery flowing back into herself as the image before her screamed in terror.
"Daddy said I could have it all," she said. "And now you die. Goodbye."
---
"A still fighter is a dead fighter," Rowena said, her gun unwavering. "You tried to steal that from me."
"What the...Rowena, what are you talking about?"
"It is mine!" she cried; Mark had no reply.
"Daddy said I could have it all," she said, a single tear on her cheek. "And now you die. Goodbye."
Two shots.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Just 'cause - Chapter 17 - Things I've Seen
Standing on the hotel's heliport, Mark, Done and Rowena watched their lift depart for greener pastures; Rowena chanced a look at Mark's expression and gave him a look.
"Some day," Rowena said, "you'll have to tell me why you didn't kill him."
"Some day," Mark replied.
Then he turned to her and buried her in a hug.
Rowena was, as a rule of thumb, not someone who wore her feelings on her sleeve - she was far too professional and jaded for that. It wasn't just professional detachment; everybody around her was this way, even "plain and simple" Mark sometimes left her feeling that she was missing half his story. But this was raw and real and warm, and despite the heat, it was the kind of good warmth you couldn't get enough of. His frame almost buried her; there was a brief shock on her back when he touched her bandages, but that faded soon. Her head rested on his chest, with her ear right next to his heart. She focused on the thump-thump of it and imagined it like a small diesel engine, powerful and steady.
Finally, she let go; he took a step back and looked at her.
"Thanks," she said, he smiled, and that was that; she walked off towards the staircase, with Mark's look trailing her. Done stepped up to the side of the enforcer, grinning from ear to ear.
"I got myself a suspicion, Simmons. You're not really all that jaded."
"I'm as surprised as you are."
"And Rovy's stolen another heart. Ah, they grow up so fast."
The two stood there for a moment, caught between the simple and the complicated sides of life.
---
Given Rowena's hunger, it wasn't odd that she'd ordered seconds in the hotel's restaurant; given her appearance, it was understandable that Mark had paid good money to have the place emptied. His Filet Mignon was staring at him from the sparkly plate on the table, slowly cooling off while he said nothing. Rowena's steak had satisfied the worst of her hunger, and with her stomach no longer screaming for nourishment, she found her senses alert enough to pick up on Mark's lack of appetite - and the running count of his beers.
"Don't you like it?" she snuck between two pieces of sweet potatoes.
"Already ate today," he said, his eyes not anywhere near his protege and instead much closer to the skyline of the city.
Rowena said nothing for the moment, but twenty seconds later she had finished her plate and pushed it aside to rest her elbows on the table.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing in particular, I'm just...thinking about what I want," he replied, and turned to face Rowena. Spotting her quizzical look, he elaborated. "You know how they say that you always want what you can't have?"
"Uh-huh. And?"
"I'm rich, deadly and sitting here with you. I have everything."
It's hard for a teenage girl to hide a blush. Rowena was no exception. Mark cracked a grin at that, but it soon disappeared again.
"So what am I looking for?"
"...redemption?" Rowena offered.
"I'm not done sinning yet."
"Hm. Fame, maybe?"
"Signed that one away. Secret agent."
"Right...ah, I've got it."
"Yes?"
"Are you ready?"
"Yes, dammit."
"...love!"
Rowena blurted it out with a smirk, but she knew it was the wrong thing to say before she had finished saying it. To his credit, Mark's reaction was not nearly as violent as it could've been; absent-mindedly, he twirled the fork in his hand and stabbed it into the meat on his plate with a bit too much force.
"I shouldn't have said that," Rowena conceded, but Mark just shook his head.
"I gave up on love a long time ago. Lots of things that could've been...none that were. And enough of that."
"Some day?" Rowena asked; Mark nodded.
"Some day. Now eat your damn veggies."
Rowena showed him some tongue, but then went back to work her plate. Mark leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
---
"Fancy meeting you here," Mark said, the suppressed Colt .45 in his right hand tremoring ever so slightly. His unkempt hair and five o'clock shadow revealed his lack of preparation.
"What are the odds?" Sharon replied with forced coldness; her Beretta 92 was shivering worse, though you couldn't see it in her face yet.
They slowly circled each other, testing the abandoned apartment they'd met in.
"This is silly," he said, but he didn't lower his gun.
"I called you yesterday, and today in the morning, and fifteen minutes ago. I know you heard me," Sharon replied, slowly shaking her head with its tightly-bound red hair.
"I'm not leaving."
"It's too late for that now, anyway."
"Do I have to shoot my way out, then?" he said with a weary smile. Even he knew that it wasn't funny.
"Stand down. For God's sake, Mark, stand down. I can save you, we'll get it bumped down to life, all you have to do is stand down."
"But it's not just that, is it? You want me to roll on the cartel."
"Your life, Mark. I'm saving your life here."
Mark knew how it felt to have your gun aimed at someone you absolutely didn't want to shoot but had to, and by the look she was giving him, Sharon knew it too. He couldn't find the courage to cry.
"I'm not coming with you, Shar. I'm going to walk out of here. I don't want to shoot...but I'll do it if I have to."
"No. You are not leaving." She put both hands on the gun, trying to keep those tremors in check. "Lose the gun, Mark. I won't say it again."
"I love you, Sharon. I do. I really do. But I can't come with you."
"I can't let you get away," she whispered, then added "I love you" under her breath.
"I know," Mark said.
Then they pulled the triggers.
Sharon's shot tore a chunk out of Mark's side, shattering his 9th rib and leaving him to stagger back in pain. He almost collapsed against the wall, blinded by pain for a second; then he got up and stripped off the light Kevlar vest under his shirt. Without thought, he turned toward the door and walked out, made it all the way to his car and started it. It was difficult to draw breath, but he'd survived worse. He felt the reassuring purr of the engine, like a soothing massage for the screaming voices in his head. He peeled the car out of its parking space and sped off. He made it three blocks before he saw a gaggle of police vehicles pass by in the opposite direction. Out of reflex, he switched his police scanner on.
"Officer down at 163rd and Riverside, I repeat, officer down..."
He turned it off again.
---
Mark opened his eyes to find himself 20 years older; Rowena gave him a strange look.
"You made that face again," she said. "You are thinking about something."
Mark shrugged, thought for a moment, then smiled. "You did good today, Rowena. Enjoy it while it lasts."
"...Rowena?" she asked. "Have I been promoted from 'kiddo'?"
His smile turned crooked.
"Well, it's about time, don't you think?"
"Some day," Rowena said, "you'll have to tell me why you didn't kill him."
"Some day," Mark replied.
Then he turned to her and buried her in a hug.
Rowena was, as a rule of thumb, not someone who wore her feelings on her sleeve - she was far too professional and jaded for that. It wasn't just professional detachment; everybody around her was this way, even "plain and simple" Mark sometimes left her feeling that she was missing half his story. But this was raw and real and warm, and despite the heat, it was the kind of good warmth you couldn't get enough of. His frame almost buried her; there was a brief shock on her back when he touched her bandages, but that faded soon. Her head rested on his chest, with her ear right next to his heart. She focused on the thump-thump of it and imagined it like a small diesel engine, powerful and steady.
Finally, she let go; he took a step back and looked at her.
"Thanks," she said, he smiled, and that was that; she walked off towards the staircase, with Mark's look trailing her. Done stepped up to the side of the enforcer, grinning from ear to ear.
"I got myself a suspicion, Simmons. You're not really all that jaded."
"I'm as surprised as you are."
"And Rovy's stolen another heart. Ah, they grow up so fast."
The two stood there for a moment, caught between the simple and the complicated sides of life.
---
Given Rowena's hunger, it wasn't odd that she'd ordered seconds in the hotel's restaurant; given her appearance, it was understandable that Mark had paid good money to have the place emptied. His Filet Mignon was staring at him from the sparkly plate on the table, slowly cooling off while he said nothing. Rowena's steak had satisfied the worst of her hunger, and with her stomach no longer screaming for nourishment, she found her senses alert enough to pick up on Mark's lack of appetite - and the running count of his beers.
"Don't you like it?" she snuck between two pieces of sweet potatoes.
"Already ate today," he said, his eyes not anywhere near his protege and instead much closer to the skyline of the city.
Rowena said nothing for the moment, but twenty seconds later she had finished her plate and pushed it aside to rest her elbows on the table.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing in particular, I'm just...thinking about what I want," he replied, and turned to face Rowena. Spotting her quizzical look, he elaborated. "You know how they say that you always want what you can't have?"
"Uh-huh. And?"
"I'm rich, deadly and sitting here with you. I have everything."
It's hard for a teenage girl to hide a blush. Rowena was no exception. Mark cracked a grin at that, but it soon disappeared again.
"So what am I looking for?"
"...redemption?" Rowena offered.
"I'm not done sinning yet."
"Hm. Fame, maybe?"
"Signed that one away. Secret agent."
"Right...ah, I've got it."
"Yes?"
"Are you ready?"
"Yes, dammit."
"...love!"
Rowena blurted it out with a smirk, but she knew it was the wrong thing to say before she had finished saying it. To his credit, Mark's reaction was not nearly as violent as it could've been; absent-mindedly, he twirled the fork in his hand and stabbed it into the meat on his plate with a bit too much force.
"I shouldn't have said that," Rowena conceded, but Mark just shook his head.
"I gave up on love a long time ago. Lots of things that could've been...none that were. And enough of that."
"Some day?" Rowena asked; Mark nodded.
"Some day. Now eat your damn veggies."
Rowena showed him some tongue, but then went back to work her plate. Mark leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
---
"Fancy meeting you here," Mark said, the suppressed Colt .45 in his right hand tremoring ever so slightly. His unkempt hair and five o'clock shadow revealed his lack of preparation.
"What are the odds?" Sharon replied with forced coldness; her Beretta 92 was shivering worse, though you couldn't see it in her face yet.
They slowly circled each other, testing the abandoned apartment they'd met in.
"This is silly," he said, but he didn't lower his gun.
"I called you yesterday, and today in the morning, and fifteen minutes ago. I know you heard me," Sharon replied, slowly shaking her head with its tightly-bound red hair.
"I'm not leaving."
"It's too late for that now, anyway."
"Do I have to shoot my way out, then?" he said with a weary smile. Even he knew that it wasn't funny.
"Stand down. For God's sake, Mark, stand down. I can save you, we'll get it bumped down to life, all you have to do is stand down."
"But it's not just that, is it? You want me to roll on the cartel."
"Your life, Mark. I'm saving your life here."
Mark knew how it felt to have your gun aimed at someone you absolutely didn't want to shoot but had to, and by the look she was giving him, Sharon knew it too. He couldn't find the courage to cry.
"I'm not coming with you, Shar. I'm going to walk out of here. I don't want to shoot...but I'll do it if I have to."
"No. You are not leaving." She put both hands on the gun, trying to keep those tremors in check. "Lose the gun, Mark. I won't say it again."
"I love you, Sharon. I do. I really do. But I can't come with you."
"I can't let you get away," she whispered, then added "I love you" under her breath.
"I know," Mark said.
Then they pulled the triggers.
Sharon's shot tore a chunk out of Mark's side, shattering his 9th rib and leaving him to stagger back in pain. He almost collapsed against the wall, blinded by pain for a second; then he got up and stripped off the light Kevlar vest under his shirt. Without thought, he turned toward the door and walked out, made it all the way to his car and started it. It was difficult to draw breath, but he'd survived worse. He felt the reassuring purr of the engine, like a soothing massage for the screaming voices in his head. He peeled the car out of its parking space and sped off. He made it three blocks before he saw a gaggle of police vehicles pass by in the opposite direction. Out of reflex, he switched his police scanner on.
"Officer down at 163rd and Riverside, I repeat, officer down..."
He turned it off again.
---
Mark opened his eyes to find himself 20 years older; Rowena gave him a strange look.
"You made that face again," she said. "You are thinking about something."
Mark shrugged, thought for a moment, then smiled. "You did good today, Rowena. Enjoy it while it lasts."
"...Rowena?" she asked. "Have I been promoted from 'kiddo'?"
His smile turned crooked.
"Well, it's about time, don't you think?"
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