OneBurning Down The House wrote:Watch out, you might get what you're after
Cool babies, strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
(Burning down the house)
Hold tight, wait 'till the party's over
Hold tight, we're in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
(Burning down the house)
Near Ripley's Canyon
255 kilometers east of Alice Springs
We looked at each other, then finally at the contractor. “This has got to be some kind of joke,” said the American, his voice an electronic buzz behind the polarized faceplate of the Mark II INTEGRAL TEMPEST. The desert sun beat down on the little gulley, cut into the Australian outback by some long-gone primordial river. The 8th Trans-Australian Highway was only a couple of kilometers away, but the surrounding barrens looked for all the world as if we were a thousand miles from all civilization--and with the exception of the deserted highway, we might as well be.
Which was, or so I imagined, the whole point of this operation. Couldn't very well do the deed in the middle of some densely populated suburb. Not without a side-order of innocent bystanders. And in the age of the high-resolution camera phone you didn't want that sort of thing to go with your black-book operation. Makes for bad press. I can know, I'm from South Africa. We wrote the book on bad press.
“I assure you it is not a joke,” said the man whose velcro nametag spelled 'Dawlish'. He was a lean, tanned man with a round face and graying hair, and he had that look about him like he was accustomed to being in charge. A giant Colt Python hand-cannon sat in a holster on his hip. If I had to guess at his nationality I'd have gone with American, chiefly because of the gun, but really he could've come from pretty much anywhere. Despite his army green uniform he didn't have the look of a military professional, which meant he probably wasn't one. “Your contract is quite real. And so is the money.” He flipped open a small portable computer. “In fact, if you'd care to check your accounts, you will notice the advance fee has already been deposited.”
“He is correct,” the Soviet replied evenly. “Two hundred thousand American dollars have just been transferred to my account.” The red prick had the gall to tap to the side of his metal-festooned skull as he said it, as if we couldn't quite tell exactly what kind of techno-charged bizarrity he was.
Don't get me wrong. I've no beef with cyborgs. It's just the communist military models that I hate. Sue me: if you'd spent half a decade fighting them in Angola you would, too. Not that we had any business being in Angola, mind, but neither did they. Bloody communists mucked up everything. “So much for Marxism and the money-less society, right comrade?”
The Soviet stared hard at me. For God's sake, he had the whole Terminator look going on, with the cybernetic eye and everything. “Not all of us are content with the course of the current regime,” he said, and something rumbled in his voice as he spoke. “Something I imagine you know a thing or two about yourself?”
I had a witty reply ready to go, but Dawlish cut me short. “Shut up, both of you.” His voice brooked no disagreement. “If you want to duke it out, you can do so when this is all said and done. But right now you have a target to remove.”
“One man.” The American sounded skeptical. “You hired the three of us to kill one single man?”
“Are you kidding?” I snapped. “This isn't just any random guy. The man's a friggin' legend. If even half of what they say about him is true...”
“He is but a man,” the Soviet concluded. “Old. Unaugmented. There is no logical reason we should have any trouble subduing him.”
“Be that as it may, it is inadvisable to underestimate your opponent,” Dawlish counseled. “My employers and I have faith in your abilities--we were assured by various sources that you three are the best at what you do--but make no mistake: your target is exceedingly dangerous. You can be assured he will have taken precautions against an attack.”
“Hear, hear,” I said. “I'm kinda surprised you didn't contract an army to take him down.”
“You're welcome to back out,” the voice of the American was full of scorn. Despite his nifty suit my opinion of him was lowering all the time. “If you're chicken?”
“What is this, High School?” I bit back and gazed into his stupid visor. How typically American to stick reflective sunglasses on a bloody warsuit. “You want to show me how big your dick is next? I'm telling you, this guy is dangerous. We should at least have a plan before moving in.”
Dawlish scraped his throat, interrupting us yet again. He pulled a map from one of the many pockets of his army suit and unfolded it onto the small camping table that stood in our midst. God only knew where that had come from--there was no apparent clue as to how Dawlish had gotten here. “Here,” he pointed to the middle of the map, “is the house. It is a sizable two-story affair, built of concrete and brick, with entrances here,” he pointed again, “here and here. There is a balcony on the second floor, looking out over a ridge on the east side of the house. A number of eucalyptus trees obscure the surrounding view of the back door here, probably deliberately. A garage in the sub-basement under the west wing contains three cars that we know of. The path from the garage door leads to a helipad on the top of this bluff here, but there currently is no helicopter present, so that escape route is already cut off.” His voice was wholly businesslike, and I had to remind myself I was on a mission to assassinate someone, not just casing the joint for a routine break-in.
Dawlish turned to his compact computer, manipulated its keyboard and showed the screen to us. It showed us a view of the house from on high--way high--rendered in the familiar red, yellow and green hues of a thermal imager. I raised an eyebrow. Real-time satellite imagery. Expensive and hard to come by even in this day and age. Someone must want this guy real dead real bad. Dawlish didn't seem to notice my surprise, or if he did he chose not to care. “There are three persons in the house,” he said conversationally and zoomed in on the house until we clearly saw the three red blobs that personified living persons. One of them moved around, the other two appeared stationary. “They are your target, his wife, and his five year old daughter. We believe the wife and daughter are on the second floor of the east wing; your target is moving around the ground floor.”
“What if the spouse and child get in the way?” hummed the Soviet.
Dawlish looked at each of us in turn. “They are not your priority, but if they prove inconvenient you may consider them expendable.”
I blinked. Well, okay, I know what you're thinking. She's accepted a contract to whack a guy, she must be a stone killer with a heart of ice, right? Right. But that doesn't mean I have to like shooting a five-year-old. I might not have much of a conscience left, but at least I have that much decency.
Unlike the American, who chuckled behind that stupid faceplate of his, and seemed positively eager to get on with it.
Christ. What an asshole.
“The American takes the front door,” said the Soviet, who was looking at the map Dawlish had provided. “I shall infiltrate through the balcony. The South African takes the back door through the garage. We hit the house at the same time. Maximum force. In and out in forty-five seconds. Is this agreeable?”
It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I looked at his semi-metallic face and shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me. You guys packing?”
By way of reply the Soviet zipped open the dufflebag at his feet and one-handedly lifted out a GSh automatic cannon, the kind normally mounted on medium-sized UCAVs. The American just chuckled and with a nasty whining sound spun up the chain gun mounted on the right arm of his suit. I raised an eyebrow and slung the Vektor CR-21 rifle from my shoulder. I mean, I get that the guy is dangerous, but chainguns and autocannons? Sheesh. Talk about an unprofessional level of overkill. I decided not to voice that particular sentiment though. “I suppose we're all ready to go then.”
“Hell yeah. Quickest million I've ever earned,” the American grinned, the sound coming out weird through the electronic speakers of his suit. “This is going to be fun.”
I rolled my eyes. What an asshole.
Dawlish, however, simply smiled--which judging by his displayed emotional range so far probably meant he was positively elated. He dug a small keep case out of another of his pockets, and produced from it a set of radio plugs, the high-tech miniature kind you could stick in your ear and would pick up your voice through the reverberations in your skull. Sweet. He handed one to me and one to the Soviet cyborg, then looked at the American and hesitated. “I take it you have another way of linking with the team?”
By way of an answer the three beads crackled with his suit-voice. “You better bet I do.”
Dawlish nodded. “Well then, if you're ready to go? I'll meet you back here when the mission is accomplished. Let's say, thirty minutes?”
'Mission'. 'Target'. 'Removal'. 'Expendable'. This guy was definitely a spook. Nobody else would talk about wet-work in such dreary euphemisms. I filed away that information for future reference, then sighed and double-checked the chamber and magazine of my rifle.
Time to get some killing done.
Two
The house in which our unsuspecting target was holed up was a two-story not-quite-villa built on a promontory looking out over the Australian outback. A dirt road lead up the bluff and the house from the nearby highway. The west wing was built on the edge of a natural depression in the terrain, and contained a two-door garage. The hollow was filled with a small grove of hardy eucalyptus trees, watered from a deep well drilled into the yard of the house. It was through this grove that I approached the house, using the trees to conceal my advance. I held the rifle in my hand and kept scanning the ground for trip-wires and buried mines.
Not that I really expected any: no man with a five year old kid would bury landmines in his own back yard. But I didn't want to be sloppy. In my line of business, sloppy got you killed.
I made it to the garage without encountering anything unusual, and slid to the door with my back against the wall to the door. Slowly I tried the handle. The door was unlocked. I tapped the bead in my ear once. “Three, in position at the garage,” I whispered. “No opposition so far.”
“Two, in position near the front door,” radioed the American. “All clear here.”
“One, in position under the balcony,” said the Soviet. “Engaging in five... four...”
My spider-sense tingled. Something was wrong. It couldn't be this simple. This was too easy. Our mark would never let his guard down like this, not when his family was at stake. Either he'd made a beginner's mistake, or...
Or we were walking into a trap.
“Three... Two...”
“Wait,” I urged. “Wait!” I was too late. That god-damn American cowboy was already moving. It was the last mistake he'd make. There was a sound of splintering wood as the INTEGRAL TEMPEST barged through the front door of the house, and a split second later the whole house shuddered as a set of timed explosions went off somewhere above me. I cursed loudly and yanked open the door to the garage, all ready to storm in and do some violence.
I almost missed the Claymores and the trip-wires spun in the doorway.
Reflexes honed by years of hauling myself out of trouble by my own hair kicked in, and I threw myself over the wires, kicking my feet off the ground and only narrowly avoiding setting off the charges. My charge into the building turned into an undignified fall, rolling and coming to my feet behind one of the cars in the darkened garage. I cursed--again--and brought the CR-21 to my shoulder. Then I tapped the bead in my ear. “Two, one, this is three. Come in.”
Silence.
I repeated. “Two, one, this is three. Come in.”
Static crackled. Then the voice of the Soviet: “Three, this is one. Two is down. Someone was expecting us.”
I nodded. “Copy that. I am moving toward the central stairwell. Suggest you meet me there.”
“Affirmative.”
Someone in this house had been ready and waiting for us. That meant they could have more surprises ready for us at any time. I gripped the Vektor. The rifle was a reassuring weight in my hands. This job wasn't turning out the way I'd hoped. Not at all.
On the other hand, it was pretty much turning out exactly the way I'd feared.
I inched forward through the garage. Two cars, both Land Rovers of an older model, stood forlornly in the empty space. There was a door in the back of the room, and I slowly edged forward, determined not to make a sound, pressing up against the wall and doing my damnedest best to listen if anyone was waiting for me on the other side. For a moment I felt like I'd somehow ended up in a scene from Jurassic Park, as if Velociraptors might be waiting for me to foolishly open that door. Then the walls shuddered as a series of dull thuds rang out, followed by another explosion going off somewhere above me. I mouthed a silent curse.
Not at all like I'd hoped.
I opened the door a crack, checked for booby-traps... And caught a glimpse of a brown-haired woman moving smoothly through the hallway. She held a Browning 1911 in one hand, and made an odd, waving motion with the other before ducking lithely into a room further down the hall.
Two hand grenades clunked against the wooden door.
Sweet Jesus.
One of the grenades rolled through the crack in the door. I slammed the door shut and kicked the damned thing away from me as hard as possible, then dove for the nearest cover, which happened to be the wheel arch of one of the Land Rovers. Twin explosions roared through the confined garage space. For a moment my world turned to flame. Shrapnel ricocheted off the walls, and I could feel splinters tearing into my arm and face. The overpressure of the explosions made my ears pop, and the car bucked under the blast wave, nearly toppling over on top of me. Acrid smoke filled the garage. I could feel blood trickle down the side of my face from half a dozen minor puncture wounds.
I vividly remembered what Dawlish had said about expendables, and suddenly felt real bloodthirsty. Call me crazy, but when people start lobbing grenades at me that's when things get personal. Yes, I know. Assassin, pot, kettle, black. Sue me. I don't like getting blown up.
Smoke curled through the ruined garage. Soot slicked against my skin. I growled audibly and brought up my rifle, trying to ignore how the smoke irritated my lungs as I moved back toward the door opening. The MARS sight scoped through the smoke. I put a burst of fire hammering through the doorway as I stumbled into the hallway beyond, punching holes into brick walls. The corridor was empty. Four doors lead to an equal number of storage rooms, all of which appeared empty. The brown-haired woman had vanished.
At the end of the hallway was a staircase. I stiffly moved up it, rifle still ready to do violence at a moment's notice, and emerged on the ground floor in a wide hallway on the ground floor. I ghosted through it on my way to the east side of the house and I tried the radio again, but got no reply. I found out why moments later. The door to the east-side balcony had been torn off its hinges, and the wall beyond had been peppered with autocannon fire. In the middle of the hallway lay the corpse of the Soviet cyborg, no thirty feet from the discarded RPG-31 rocket launcher that had done him in. The tandem-charged warhead it had fired had punched a hole straight through the chest of my ally. Layers of subdermal armor and cybernetics showed in the ghastly cavity in the middle of his ribcage. Blood and a black fluid I assumed was some kind of motor oil pooled beneath his body. The Soviet was quite clearly deader than hell.
I stepped over his corpse and moved toward a wide-open space that had presumably once functioned as a living room. Two of the walls were gone, and everything in the room had been absolutely destroyed in a series of explosions, at the center of which had apparently been the American in his INTEGRAL TEMPEST suit. I looked at the walls and whistled despite myself. We'd been expected all right, but these defenses weren't jerry-rigged. These were some impressive heavy-duty booby-traps. From the look of it, our mark had lined the living room walls near his front door with antipersonnel mines wired to a simple pressure charge under the floor, and then covered them in plaster until he'd needed them to remove a threat too dangerous to engage directly.
Clearly, I idly thought looking at the smoldering remains of the ruined warsuit, the American had fit the bill. There wasn't much left of the INTEGRAL TEMPEST. Imagine what happens to a frog when it swallows a live grenade. When the dust settles, there's not much left there but scraps and stains. That was what it was like for the American, who had from the look of it been hit with a set of well-placed shaped charges. Fully half of the INTEGRAL TEMPEST hadn't been cracked open so much as vaporized in a wash of directed copper plasma jets. What was left... Well, let's just say dentals wouldn't do you any good when it came to identifying the bits that remained.
I guess that meant I was on my own.
An icy chill ran down my spine. Shit. This guy had been prepared for a god-damn assault by top-of-the-line battlesuits. And here I was, waving my puny assault rifle around. I was a world-class assassin for hire, but right then and there I felt like a scared little girl in a haunted house, wondering what was going to come for me. Fuck me, but I was properly spooked.
“I knew I shoulda stayed in Mexico,” I whispered to no-one in particular. “Retirement was fitting me nicely...”
I moved away from the ruined couches and dining room table to the middle of the room, and very nearly jumped out of my skin when a voice addressed me. “Well, well. Look what we have here.”
I wheeled around, my finger on the trigger of the Vektor rifle, and found myself facing a wall-mounted TV-screen which had somehow survived the detonation of the shaped charges intact. From it, a man stared at me. His black hair turned to gray in more than a few places. A beard of two weeks covered his chin. Icy blue eyes stared hard at me. He was the mark, the man who who had killed my two compatriots, and who had been two steps ahead of us this whole time. He smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. “I take it you are one of the people sent to take me out?”
“I am,” I replied coldly, staring into the camera mounted atop the television. It was tiny, only the size of a pearl. I could've walked by a dozen of the things without noticing them. I mentally kicked myself. We should've brought an EMP before storming the house.
“Well, you sure picked the wrong dude to mess with,” the man continued, anger seeping into his voice. An unholy fury burned in his eyes. “You came into my house. You tried to kill me. You put the life of my wife at risk. But worst of all, you put the life of my daughter at risk. Have you got anything to say for yourself?”
I shrugged, momentarily at a loss for words. “It's just a job. Nothing personal,” I offered lamely.
The man snorted, his voice full of derision and contempt. “Look what you did to my house. Look what you tried to do to me. It is personal for me.” He crossed his arms, and I got the impression that he was moving somehow. Was he in a vehicle? There had been two cars in the garage...
I flashed back to Dawlish' briefing.
There should have been three cars.
Shit. I'd missed it all this time. He was gone. And I knew that somehow, our target knew that I knew. He smiled predatorily. “That's right. Elvis has left the building. I saw you coming from miles away, lady. And even better, I've been preparing for just this eventuality for years. There's a Daisy Cutter walled in the basement wired to this here charge,” he lifted a remote detonator into view, and flicked the protective red cap off the switch. “Once I press this button, you have twenty seconds left to live. I suggest you take that time to consider your no doubt great many sins, as well as the fatal mistake you made when you took up a contract on the head of Jack Ridley.” He smiled toothily. “Because I'm sporting like that. Ciao ciao, and better get your game-face on!”
He pressed that damned red button.
I ran. Hell, I ran like I'd never ran before. I lost the rifle and I ran like a motherfucker, I ran like the wind, I bounded out the ruined living room and down the hall, I sprinted onto the balcony so fast you wouldn't believe, but I knew I'd never be fast enough.
I jumped, and made it maybe three feet down to the rugged ground of the Outback when my time ran out.
The FAE detonated. The world exploded. Behind me the house simply ceased to exist, transforming from one moment to the next into a titanic ball of fire, flame and flying debris. The blast wave of the explosion knocked the air from my lungs and slammed my feet out from under me. I imagined this was what it felt like to be hit by a freight train--the massive concussive shockwave of the detonation blasting me through the air like a twig in a storm. I felt flames singing the hair and skin of my neck, setting my combat fatigues on fire. Then I hit the ground horizontally, and a blinding pain shot through my shoulder. I fought for breath and found myself rolling hard across the rough desert surface. Ground, air, then ground again, each replacing themselves in my field of vision with dizzying speed, until my back hit a boulder and I came to an abrupt stop. More pain, shooting up through every fiber of my body. I felt something crack inside my ribcage, and fireworks exploded behind my eyelids. I gasped, dizzy with shock and pain unlike anything I'd felt before. Tears burned down my cheeks. Something hot and sticky trickled down my arm. A hacking cough escaped my lips, and a trickle of blood ran down my chin. I was hurt, God I was hurt real bad. I needed a doctor. I tried to move, but pain shot like lightning through my nerves when I did. The world swam before my eyes, then everything receded into a distant prick of light.
Three
I blinked, and was immediately sorry I had. My breath wheezed into my lungs, but somehow didn't seem to draw enough oxygen from the air. The world seemed to swirl dizzily before my eyes. Everything hurt, my legs, my head... But most of all my arm and my chest. I gasped, and it felt like my chest was on fire. I'd broken at least one of my ribs, maybe more. The world blurred red, and I realized I was laying on my back on the rocky ground. Big and small pieces of debris were scattered all around me.
I realized I wasn't alone.
Dawlish watched the plume of thick black smoke mushroom off above the bluff where the house had stood, a wry smile etched on his face. “Well fuck me sideways. Seems like the old man still has a fight left in him after all.”
I tried to move, but my legs refused to obey my scrambled brain. Dawlish stood over me and looked down. I couldn't read a single emotion in his eyes. My mouth moved, but instead of words only rasping breaths escaped my lips. “Well then,” he said, and his lips twitched a little. “Thank you for your services, Miss Phoenix. But I'm afraid your usefulness to my employers has come to an end.” Suddenly that ridiculous revolver was in his hand and pointing at me. I tried to speak, tried to move, but nothing happened. My own body had betrayed me, flooding my senses with agony as I lay paralyzed on the dusty desert floor. “Goodbye, Victoria,” he said. I stared into the barrel of that giant hand-cannon. With a superhuman exertion of will I lifted my hand, but it wasn't enough, not nearly so. The barrel loomed larger than a train tunnel that swallowed all light.
The last thing I saw was a blue-white blossom of the muzzle flash.
My house is out of the ordinary
That's right, don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
(Burning down the house)
No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin' yet
Everything's stuck together
I don't know what you expect staring into the TV set
Fighting fire with fire
(Burning down the house)
A Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda adventure of tenuous canonicity
The year is 2019, and the Cold War neve48f4×6n4... Y#&)^ictoria Phoeni#*... Kzz#^&!L÷etrayed. Now, injured and alon►63^#@‼I... £j2Ö1101100110101^#!ust find a way to report back to her ha!#fzz#*#...
Four
My name is Victoria Phoenix, and I am a dead woman.Hit The Road, Jack wrote:Hit the road Jack
And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more
(What you say?)
Or so I thought. I mean, I should be dead, right? A .357 Magnum round to the head at close range is just not something you survive. My luck had run out. I'd bit the dust. My ticket was punched. This was the end of the road. The Man had come around to collect his due. And I was sort of okay with it. Sure, getting my brains blown out onto some plot of god-forsaken Australian dirt wasn't exactly the end I'd hoped for, but it beat getting slowly tortured to death by some Angolan mob, or rotting away in a secret CIA prison. Yeah, I'd had a pretty good run, but no way was I getting back from this one. The pearly gates... Or rather in my case, the fire and brimstone, were waiting. This was the end. Of my elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end. I'll never look into your eyes... Again. Dum-dum-dum.
I guess the universe has a mean sense of humor.
I drifted through peaceful oblivion. No thought. No light. No time. Just blissful darkness and a complete dearth of sense. I was void of want or worry. Eras of thought came and went, and I had no idea if they spanned seconds or weeks. I could just drift here forever, without any concern for life or time. I felt supremely relaxed. If I had a body, I'm sure I would have smiled.
Instants (seconds? Lifetimes? I had no idea) passed. For reasons that were wholly beyond me I felt myself floating upward. The darkness slowly faded and resolved into muted gray. With the return of light, nagging concerns re-entered my perfect world of bliss. Shouldn't I be dead? I was pretty sure I should be. I vaguely remembered a terrible explosion and a flash of gunfire. I involuntarily cringed at the recollection of blinding, unfiltered agony.
Yeah, I should be dead. And probably in hell, too.
But this sure didn't feel like any hell I'd ever read about. For one, there was a distinct lack of sulfur and suffering. For that matter, it didn't feel much like death either.
If I was somehow alive though, there should be pain. There wasn't. I felt only moderately uncomfortable.
Hmm. Uncomfortable. That was new. It sort of meant I had a body, didn't it? I frowned, and realized my eyes were closed. The vague sense of discomfort morphed in into a more physical sensation, became centered on my back. I was lying down on something soft. I could make out sources of light beyond my eyelids.
I opened my eyes.
Lights stabbed like needles at my eyes, which teared up almost immediately. I blinked rapidly, narrowed my eyes to slits. A blurry world slowly slid into focus. A room. Sunlight filtered through drawn curtains, not nearly as bright as I'd first thought. Walls covered in bland wallpaper with a flower motif. Somewhere on my left side a machine made beeping noises. The sterile smell of antiseptics I recognized from memories.
A hospital. I was in a bloody hospital. How the hell did I end up in a bloody hospital? How the hell was I not dead?
I tried to say something, tried to call for attention, but I found my throat was dry like the outback desert. I erupted in a series of wheezing coughs. Pricks of pain tore through my chest and head. My eyes blurred over and I sank back into unconsciousness.
I opened my eyes again. Beyond the curtains the world was dark. Soft overhead lighting illuminated the room. An Asian woman in hospital scrubs was looking at me, a startled expression on her face. Again I tried to speak, with just as much success as before--that is to say, none at all. The woman – nurse, I guessed – ran off, calling loudly for a doctor in slightly accented English.
In no time I was surrounded by doctors. They crowded around my bed, shone lights into my eyes, fussed over the machines next to me and adjusted the IV drip stuck in my arm. They checked my blood pressure and heart rate and talked in rapid medical jargon I couldn't quite follow. I didn't mind at first, but soon began to loathe the way they fussed over me like I wasn't actually there. I anemically lifted my arm and with a not-inconsiderable effort pushed away the hand of a doctor who was waving it in front of my face. He flinched and pulled his hand away, apparently startled. Doctors exchanged meaningful glances. The medical chatter intensified threefold.
It only made me detest them more. I hated feeling weak. I hated having no clue what had happened to me. I hated having no control over my circumstance, and I hated being unable to speak properly.
Finally a nurse was considerate enough to feed me water through a straw. The cool liquid sizzled its way down my throat, lubricated parched vocal cords. I felt my voice coming back to me. “How long?” I croaked with a weird voice. “How long was I out?”
The doctors exchanged more glances, worried and startled this time. Finally one of them had the decency to reply. “Er- Well. You've been here slightly longer than six months, ma'am. And you've been comatose the whole time.” She kept talking, but I didn't hear what she said.
Six months. Six fucking months. I'd lost half a year.
Jesus Christ.
I decided to worry about that later. I shook my head and was immediately sorry I had. Momentarily the room blurred into a bewildering array of colors. I narrowed my eyes in concentration and the world slowly regained its focus. “How did I end up here?”
More hesitation and concern. “There was an... incident in the interior,” a male doctor said. He glanced at the clipboard in his hands as if he was afraid to look me in the eye. “You were pulled out of the wreckage of a house that had, ah, apparently exploded?” He knitted his eyebrows. “Ma'am, you had been shot. In the head. To be honest, we didn't expect you to survive at all. In twenty years I've never seen anyone survive anything like this, let alone recover to the extent that you... apparently... have. It's, well...” He smiled wryly, and lamely continued: “I guess some would say it's a miracle.”
Now I understood the glances. A miracle. Yeah, I guess so. One for which they could thank the South African government and the people at the Witwatersrand Institute...
I blinked as the memory of the transgene facility involuntarily faded. I couldn't hold the thought, couldn't quite recall the time I'd spent there. It was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the memories of that time, reduced them to scattered fragments I couldn't quite recall. I scrambled to piece together the jigsaw my memories had become, but thoughts and impressions shifted when I tried to remember, slipped through my fingers into a fog I couldn't see through.
I gritted my teeth. The days of the Institute hadn't ranked among my favorite memories, I knew that much. But they had still been my memories. Now there was nothing there but a hazy gap, filled with a welter of half-formed images and not-quite-recollections that melted away as soon as I tried to focus on them.
I shuddered. Fuck me, I was turning into an unholy hybrid of Boba Fett and Jason Bourne--the amnesiac assassin who just won't die.
My head swam. What else had that bullet done to me?
When I regained consciousness the doctors had gone and my room was empty. I hadn't even noticed I'd fallen asleep, or maybe I'd just passed out. Outside it was still dark. Or dark again, I couldn't tell either way. I looked around the room. I had to get out of here. It wasn't safe. I hadn't attracted any attention as just another anonymous coma patient, but as a Jane Doe who miraculously recovered from a lethal gunshot wound after six months? The chance someone would connect the dots was too great. I couldn't take the risk. Besides, I'd been dead for quite long enough.
I tried to get up from the bed, sat up, and was nearly knocked flat by a dizzy spell. Easy, I told myself, and gave my body some time to adjust to the fact that the blood going up to my brain had to really contend with gravity for the first time in half a year. The dizziness faded, but I still felt about as strong as a paper bag in a tropical storm. This was going to be more difficult than I'd hoped. I slowly crept out from underneath the sheets, ignored the ghastly green hospital pajamas, and let my legs slide off the bed until my naked feet were touching the cool floor.
I slowly shifted my weight from the bed to my feet, then pushed off... And remained standing.
Well, that was one thing at least. The Bride sure as hell didn't have it this easy. I put one foot before the other and managed a few steady steps without falling over.
So far, so good.
A thin white hospital robe was hanging from a peg near the bed. I snatched it and put it on, then put on the pair of low-heeled slippers beneath it. Thus having properly dressed myself for a night on the town I stealthed to the door... Well, I say stealthed, but it was really more of an anemic shamble. Military-grade South African gengineering might have managed to somehow save my ass--most of it anyway--from death by acute lead poisoning, but six months of lying flat on my back sure as hell hadn't done my fine motor control any good. But I made my way to the door as well as might be expected and worked the hinge.
The good news was that the door opened. The bad news was that there was a burly orderly outside my room. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me, no doubt surprised I was standing, then stood up and approached, his expression transforming into that smug smiles-and-butterflies mask of fake politeness they teach kindergarten teachers, policemen and hospital orderlies at... Well, wherever governments train these people. As he moved over he maneuvered himself in just such a way that he's blocking my approach to the hallway. “I'm sorry ma'am, but you shouldn't be leaving your room.”
I scowled a little “I shouldn't?”
“You're still in recovery ma'am. You shouldn't be moving around too much. Besides...” He eyed me weirdly. “Apparently the police would like to ask you some questions about... Well, about how you ended up with a bullet in your skull, I suppose. You should return to your room.”
“I've lost my memory,” I lied. Hey, if I'm going to be Jason Bourne I might as well milk it for all it's worth.
The orderly shrugged. “It's not for me to decide ma'am. The cops will still want to talk to you, ma'am. I've been instructed to make sure you don't leave the room until the constables arrive.”
Crap. That wasn't good. I didn't want to meet the police. They probably wanted to know how I ended up shot and left for dead next to a house that had very much exploded. Answering those questions would be awkward, so I would much prefer to avoid it if all possible. And I certainly didn't want my photograph in the computers of the Long Arm either. If my name or face popped up in a police database somewhere chances were good there'd be red flags going up to tell, well, whoever might be interested in my unexpected survival all about it. I very much didn't want that to happen.
I had to get out of here, stat.
Which meant I had to get past this chump somehow. But that was easier said than done--ordinarily I could've taken him no problem, but it was pretty clear I wasn't exactly in my prime, and this guy looked like he worked out a lot. He sure as hell had a lot of pounds on me.
That really left me with only one option. I stole a glance over his shoulder. Apart from us the hallway was deserted. Perfect. “I'm sorry,” I apologized to the orderly. And then I kicked him in the groin as hard as I could manage. I wasn't as fast as I was used to. I didn't strike as hard as I was used to. And hospital slippers weren't the best footwear for this sort of thing either. But you know what's the beauty of kicking a guy in the family jewels? None of that really matters as long as you connect. And I obviously did: the eyes of the orderly bulged comically as he doubled over in pain. I grabbed his head and slammed it into the door hard enough to leave an impression. He moaned weakly and collapsed into a heap.
I quickly dragged his limp body into the room, which took way more effort than it should but I still managed. A minute later and breathing hard, I looked down upon the unconscious male nurse with some satisfaction. If you can't beat them fair and square, play dirty. Granted, the poor guy probably didn't deserve this sort of treatment just for doing his job, but hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. At least he was already in a hospital.
I left the room and locked the door behind me with the keys I'd nicked off the orderly. With some luck it'd be a while before someone the orderly or reported him missing, but that wasn't something I wanted to rely on. I hurried down the hall as quickly as I could manage without attracting unwanted attention. I passed hallway after polished, well-lit hospital hallway, nighttime meaning most of them were deserted but for the occasional doctor or nurse, few of whom even spared me a glance--which was quite alright by me. As long as they assumed I was just another insomniac patient I'd hopefully be free to roam. I made my way to the employee-only areas one floor down without being stopped. There was a magnetic lock on the door, but once again the nurse's key chain proved useful and I slipped in unnoticed.
I found myself in a neatly furnished break room, lined with a few couches and plants, a water cooler and the inevitable coffee machine. A few magazines were scattered across a table in the middle of the room. I grabbed a few and looked at the dates of publication. November. It was frickin' November. I really had lost six months. God damn. I threw the magazines back on the table and hurried over to the adjoining women's locker room. This time there were no locks on the door: obviously the hospital assumed its employees would behave themselves on the job... Even if perhaps their patients didn't always. That suited me well enough. I closed the locker room door behind me and froze as a voice called out: “Beg your pardon.”
Shit. I turned around slowly and faced a barefoot nurse who had clearly been in the process of changing into her hospital shrubs. She looked at me from underneath thick brown eyebrows. A nametag on her light blue nurse's attire spelled her name: 'Dorothy'. Dorothy frowned at me, that know-it-all nurses frown I hate so much. “This is a restricted area. What do you suppose you're doing here?”
“I don't know,” I lied lamely. “I thought the ob/gyn department was this way? Maybe not. I must be lost.” I tried to look my damnedest best to look bewildered and confused. I sure as hell wasn't the greatest actor in the world, but given my situations it was not that hard to look like a lost (and possibly crazy, I suppose) patient who'd somehow stumbled into the break room.
Dorothy's frown persisted. Obviously I hadn't convinced her of my naked innocence. “Well you're not allowed in here. Let's get you on your way, shall we?”
She put her hand on my shoulder. I sprang into action like a coiled spring, grabbed hold of her extended arm and yanked it to pull her off balance. She yelped as she stumbled sideways; I slid my body behind hers and put my left arm around her throat, locking it in place with my right arm that came up from under her armpit. It was a good variable choke, the kind that would let you either knock out or outright kill the target, the eventual result depending solely on how much pressure you exerted on the trachea. Well, that and whether you knew what you were doing, I suppose.
I knew what I was doing. Nurse Dorothy gasped once as I closed off her windpipe, too surprised to even struggle, and went limp almost instantly. I kept the choke for several more seconds, then let her body slide to the floor. Dorothy would be back in fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, alive but with one hell of a headache. Make your own Kansas jokes.
If I hadn't been before, I sure was on a clock now. I scoured the women's locker room for clothes that fit, finally settling for an awful pair of beige trainers under a set of gray sweatpants and a simple white shirt that hopefully wouldn't fit too tightly. I quickly changed out of the hospital garb and, in the middle of doing so, accidentally caught a glimpse of myself in one of the locker room mirrors.
Jesus Christ.
I looked like I'd been gone through hell. Twice. My eyes were hollow and my eyelids looked like they were inflamed--it took a few seconds before I realized that was more because my skin was pale as a bled pig than anything else. My cheeks were sunken. Hard lines radiated out from the corners of my mouth. And just under a line of thin blond hair that looked more like straw than anything and there was a weird pink blotch on the the right side of my forehead, which I assumed was where the bullet had punched a hole in my skull. Come to think of it, there were razor-thin scars all over my body. Some old, but most of them new: the results no doubt of Ridley's exploding villa trick.
Repeat for emphasis: Jesus Christ.
“Damn, girl,” I said to my reflection and brushed lightly over the scar on my forehead. “You need a pair of sunglasses, stat. Also, a day on the beach. And maybe some make-up.”
But the make-up and the beach would have to wait. First, I had a hospital to escape from. Yeah, putting it like that made it sound a lot less spectacular than it felt. Still, you try busting yourself out of a hospital bed a few hours after waking up out of a coma. Let me tell you, it's not as easy as it sounds. This two unconscious hospital employees can attest to.
I left the employee areas and made my way through the pleasantly lit and wholly abandoned hallways of the midnight hospital once again. Slowly I made my way to the front entrance. I had to descend several flights of stairs to get there, which took such a toll on my body that I was panting by the time I reached the ground floor. I was in pretty bad shape, that much was obvious. Still, I kept telling myself, it was better than being dead.
Maybe if I told myself that often enough I'd eventually start believing it. Half-dead was a bad place to be in for a wanted assassin-for-hire. I had to get the hell out of here. After what seemed like hours but couldn't have been more than ten minutes (maybe my sense of time was shot as well. Or maybe I was just nervous as hell) I finally made it to the reception area, a gleaming expanse of fake marble, with couches that made a brave not not entirely successful attempt at looking comfortable and not-quite-alive plants spaced through it at regular intervals. At the far end, maybe twenty-five feet away from the revolving-door entrance, stood the reception desk, manned by a sleepy-looking receptionist.
I was halfway through the atrium when I noticed that before the reception desk stood two members of the New South Wales Police. This I could tell from their uniforms and, of more immediate importance, the Glock pistols that came with that uniform.
Well, crap.
For a single moment my steps faltered, and of course one of the officers took just that moment to throw a scanning look through the atrium, his gaze lingering on me for a moment. Just my luck. Well, I sure as hell couldn't back out now--I could already imagine the rozzers' reaction: unidentified female gets the hell out of Dodge the moment she sees police coming? Yeah, that didn't scream 'suspicions individual' at all. Whether I wanted to or not, I was pretty much condemned to keep going.
I prayed to whichever god might be listening that these guys didn't have a description or photograph of me with them. For all I know they might not be here for me at all, but with the unlucky streak I had going I wasn't going to assume anything of the sort. And hell--how often do police show up at a hospital?
I walked on, trying to look blasé and supremely unconcerned and failing horribly. I felt cold sweat rolling down my back as I slowly walked toward the door and thus, by inevitable feat of geography, the reception desk. I had been able to take down two people today, but those had both been unsuspecting nurses, and even so it had taken an effort I was entirely unused to. They hadn't been together, and they hadn't been packing either. If these cops called me out, I was toast for sure. Game over; do not pass start, do not collect two hundred dollars.
The receptionist looked at me as I slowly walked to the front door, trying for all the world not to shamble. For one heart-stopping second one of the cops followed his gaze and looked at me.
I nodded at him, tried to force a smile, and ruthlessly suppressed an instinct to make a run for it.
The cop looked at me for a modestly long eternity, then nodded as well, turned back to the receptionist and asked a question.
The next thing I knew I was outside, risking one last glance back at the revolving hospital doors and the facade of the immense facade of what was apparently called St. Vincent's Hospital. Then I hurried down the steps leading to those doors as fast as I could without breaking my neck. I disappeared around the corner and let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. I was free and loose in Sydney. Without money, without passport, with nothing but the stolen clothes on my back and the holes in my memory. But free and, more importantly, alive.
I sighed. So far, so good.
Yeah. I guess so.
Thirty minutes later I was leaning across a cold steel railing and stared out across Sydney Harbor. My thoughts were a jumbled mess. Six months I'd been unconscious. Half a year I'd been fed through a tube. Half a year I'd been lying helpless in a hospital bed. Merry hell. I was still trying to wrap my head around it.
For sure everyone who cared thought I was dead. Certainly if Dawlish and his employers knew I was still alive they wouldn't have left me that way. The smart thing to do would be to cut my losses and walk away. Yeah. That would definitely be the smart thing to do. But as the sun slowly came up behind me and the lights of the Opera House switched off on one by one, my mind was inexorably drawn to thoughts of bloody murder and revenge. Son of a bitch. The contract had been a set-up; the mark had seen me coming from a mile away. I'd nearly bought the farm in the explosion, and as if that wasn't a bad enough professional insult, my own employer had shot me in the head.
Long story short, I'd been played like a fiddle.
It was that realization more than anything that angered me. I clenched the railing so hard my knuckles turned white. I'd been used and discarded like trash. I was angry at myself for walking into this crap like a rookie. I was angry for the way I stood here, helpless and hapless, with holes in my mind and half a year of time lost. The events of my last few days – both immediate and six months past – repeated themselves over and over in my head, and every time they did I they just pissed me off more and more, until finally around six in the mornign I came to a definitive conclusion.
Fuck the smart thing.
I was going to make someone fucking pay.
Now baby listen baby don't you treat me this way
I'll be back on my feet someday
