13

“Where the hell is the coward?” I demand to the leader of one of Zorikan’s crews. He’s sent three with us but didn’t even turn up himself. Bastard.

“What’re you askin’ me for, small fry,” the man replies, with a heavy accent. He sports a black leather jacket and a matching eyepatch, with slicked back hair as darker than mine. “I don’t question the boss. Nobody questions the boss.” The moonlight makes his glossy hair shine.

I grit my teeth and look for the people I know. Two three-man crews that I don’t know discuss their plans and check their weapons before me. Malyk hasn’t turned up yet, neither have the crew I know.

“Maybe he just hasn’t showed up yet,” he continues. “Zorikan works at his own time, but whatever he does, it always works out best for him.”

“Oh yeah, Slick? How does that work out for you?”

“Reap the benefits. Profit trickles down from the top here, unlike in this capitalist shithole society. Names Reeler, by the way.”

“Reeler? Did your mother name you that?” I scoff.

“My dad,” he responds, not noticing my sarcasm. “And that over there, Loski and Barrlin, they’re my team,” he nods to a tiny, sketchy looking girl, and a long faced man in an oversized coat.

I nod. “And the other crew?”

A young woman, probably a year or two older than Rieka, slides over to me. She wears, light boots, oversized trackpants, a sweater tied around her waist, so it drapes down like a kilt and a vest. Her bare, skinny arms are red from the cold, and littered with scratches, bruises and bandages. Her long brown hair is done up in a messy bun, and orange construction glasses rest on her forehead. “Names Akila, pleased to meet you,” she extends a grimy hand to me. I take it, shaking with a strong enough grip so she knows that I’m no pushover.

“You the leader of those two?” I ask, nodding to the nearly identical men, sitting next to each other, prominent mustaches slapped onto their faces.

She nods. “Very much indeed. And hey, don’t judge, they’re my homies. Errel and Arral.”

I sigh. “Why would I judge two gay twin brothers in a relationship with each other?”

She erupts with a hysterical laugh. “Leave ‘em alone alright? Any idea what year it is?”

“Don’t remind me,” I tell her.

“Kallix! My dude!” Deqar hollers from across the street.

“Hey, aren’t we supposed to be discreet?” I ask as he saunters over to me, Varan slinking behind him.

In response, he slaps my ass, making me flinch. I shove him away. Akila bursts into laughter while Reeler looks at me with a high nose. I notice Rieka hugging the twins, and I call her name.

She pads over to me, looking at me like she expects me to shred her to pieces with knives for words. I consider it. “Where’s the slimy piece of shit?” I ask.

“Not coming,” she muttered.

“What?” I ask, stepping closer to her. Reeler and Akila flinch.

She looks up at me, and I’m instantly hypnotized. She steps closer to me, a fresh wave of her delicious smell hits me. “Zorikan is a business man,” she says, tracing something on my chest. “It’s not worth it to him, to risk his life for this. A CEO doesn’t do the work his employees do.”

Normally, under any other circumstances, I would’ve unleashed a string of words so hurtful that they would make anybody want to curl up into a ball and die, but the way she says it, it’s like she’s in pain. Like as if she doesn’t want it but has to do it anyway. As if she has no choice. Her jaw is tight and her hand is shaky as it glides over my bare skin. She tilts her head up to look at me, and for a second I think she’s going to kiss me, when she wraps her arms around me, laying her head on my collar bone. I’m frozen.

“Yeahhh, we should give them a bit of privacy,” Deqar says, ushering everybody away.

“Why do you work for that monster?” I ask, hugging her back.

She shakes, like she’s about to cry, but doesn’t respond.

“Why, Rieka? Tell me. I… I want to understand you.”

“Kallix,” she breaths, pulling away from me. “You have to listen to me.”

“Anything. Go ahead,” I reassure her.

She holds the back of my head, pulling me down until there’s a hair’s width between us. “You cannot cross Zorikan.”

“What?” I ask, incredulously.

“Look, I can tell that you plan to. I know, he’s a dick and a half, but you cannot try and kill him.”

“Why the hell not? He can’t even catch me!”

“Shhh! He doesn’t have to. He won’t even kill you. He could cripple you, leave you paralyzed from the waist down. He knows you. He knows what you care about hold dear and he can take that away from you.”

Paralyzed? I would… have to live with my brother. In a wheelchair. Doing whatever the hell he wants me to do. “And why are you tell me this?” I ask, looking away from her. I don’t want to get lost in her eyes now. I can’t afford to get hypnotized. I need to think.

She bites her lip. “You’re a prick, Kallix. You’re a pricky dick. Selfish, narcissistic, arrogant and an idiot.”

I scoff. “You think I don’t know that?”

“But you’re a good person. You’re an actual, real, cold hard true person. You don’t hide from who you are, you flaunt it to the world. You’re not fake, you’re not plastic, you do what you think is right, when you think it’s right, even if it isn’t. And the world needs more people like that and…”

“And?”

“I… care about you,” she chokes. “As in I don’t want you to die. Not like I care about you as in I care about you like I’m a lover, but like I care about you as in I care about the fact that your alive. I like you… being alive.”

My gaze is unwavering. An island, refusing to be submerged by her ocean.

“Oi! It’s midnight, come on!” Reeler calls.

The two of us amble to the ground, crowded around the slick haired man.

“Ok, Zorikan just buzzed in, informed me that I’m in charge, so I call the shots alright? I know we’ve got three crews, but we’re splitting into two teams. One will cause as much mayhem as possible, get the cops over here while the other will infiltrate and find a secure location to wait. Once the up team gets the cops in the know, mayhem will break out. These bansilin guys well have all their men running around, ready to fight off the police. The down group will get out of where they’re hiding, get into the control room and spam every button that they goddamn can. Gotta overheat the system, ok? Mess it up as much as you can. Piss on the controller maybe, I dunno.”

It’s not a terrible plan. But I didn’t want the cops coming here in in the first place. Luckily, I doubt Kaloaan will show up. He might try, but by the time he goes all the way from West Side to East Side, everything will probably be over.

“Ok, ok, lemme see. I gotta break y’all up into two groups. Uppers are with Akila, downers are with me alright? Ok good. With me, I want Kallix, Rieka, Malyk, Barrlin and Varan. Uppers are Akila, Arral, Errel, Deqar and Loski, alright?”

“Ah shit,” Deqar curses. “Am I that bad a runner?” he asks me.

I brush him off and move to Malyk.

“Hey, Kal. Look what they gave me,” he says, holding up a large assault rifle.

“You sure you can handle this thing?”

“I dunno. My dad taught me how to shoot when I was young,” he says, holding it up to aim. “Never shot something this high caliber before.”

“All I got was this,” I tell him, holding up the handgun.

“No matter how small the gun, it’ll still kill somebody.”

“Yeah. That’s why I don’t really want it.”

“Let’s move out!” Reeler calls. “Kallix, lead the way.”

I nod and break into a steady jog. Still a couple blocks away, no need to get excited. Reeler maintains my pace, keeping solidly at my side, an assault rifle like Malyk’s in his hand. Rieka and Malyk run side by side behind us, with Barrlin and Varan bringing up the rear. We close in on the warehouse.

Through the door and over the glass walls, I swipe Jereva’s keycard, letting us inside. They gawk at the size of the shelves. “K and H warehouse,” Reeler marvels. “What a success this must’ve been.”

“We should do a supply run here sometime,” Rieka suggests.

“Dude,” Malyk breaths in my ear. “Think about this. If we succeed, this warehouse will just be out in the open. We should invest some money in a shipping company, transport it back to West Side and sell it online,” he says with a huge grin.

I raise an eyebrow. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Oh. Right,” he laughs, falling back beside Rieka.

We reach the ladder I’d set up earlier and scamper up to the top of the shelf. The room fills with the sound of guns clanking against rungs. By the time we reach the stop where the wooden plank had once been, Reeler overtakes me, and shoots a grappling line. The then cuts it and ties it to a run of the ladder we’d climbed. I’m the first, quickly shimmying up like a sloth, high on flakka. The rope sags a tad with my weight, but the only way I can fall is if I’m heavy enough for my weight to lift the entire ladder off the ground and over the shelf. By the time I’ve crossed the metal support beam, and reached the control panel, the last of us, Barrlin, has just gotten onto it.

Reeler peers over my shoulder as I lift the plastic case off and set it aside, then press the green button. “How the hell did you find this place?” he asks in wonder.

“I used to be a detective,” I explain, “but I retired because the pay wasn’t good enough for me.”

He nods and starts down the stairs. One by one, we trickle after him, until we reach the grand opening. “Mother of god. This shit is huge,” Reeler gasps, flattening himself onto his belly. The rest of us follow suit.

“What’s the plan boss?” Barrlin asks, edging forward.

“I’m thinkin’, I’m thinkin’,” Reeler responds.

He reminds me of an old movie bad boy type.

“Hey, we got company,” Rieka mentions, nodding at two men walking along the cat walk adjacent to ours. If they turn right, they’ll run strait into us.

“I can take ‘em out. I’ve got a shot,” Varan mutters, squinting into his gun like a military sniper.

“Don’t shoot. I repeat, do not shoot. We move, stay low,” Reeler decides, scrambling to the left, nearly on all fours. “How the hell did Zorikan expect us to find the blowup point with no inside man?” he asks to no one in particular.

“Hostage,” Rieka offers from behind us. “We need a hostage. Force it out of him.”

“Nice thinking,” he commends as we slink.

Then the catwalk ends, and there’s only a door before us. “What? This shit doesn’t connect to the… screw it. We go in,” Reeler says. The men on the same level as us are just about to turn our way.

Reeler turns to doorknob, and it opens. Reeler goes in first, and before I’m even inside, I hear bullets. Instinctively I dive behind the nearest cover I can find, which is a metal counter, crouch down and pull out my handgun.

The shots stop before Rieka gets in. Reeler blows away the smoke coming from his barrel with a smirk.

As Malyk, Varan and Barrlin get in, I stand to see three dead men in red and black uniforms, slumped in their chairs. Several monitors that show security camera feeds line the wall, mounted on top of each other. One of them has gone black with a bullet hole in it. A fourth man lies slumped in a bloody heap against the wall, beneath a huge red level labeled, ALARM. Shit. That was close.

“Varan bar the door, Malyk and Rieka check the security feeds for anything useful. Kallix, come with me, we’re scouting ahead.”

I nod, glancing at Malyk who gives a half-hearted smile. His eyes linger on the dead bodies in front of him. I look at Rieka too. I want to see how she’s holding up, but she’s already hammering away at the keyboard.

Reeler’s peering through a glass door, from which a spiral staircase begins. He opens it tentatively, then jerks his head at me to follow. Together, we creep down the stairs and into a hallway. Four doors line each side of the hall, the first of which is labeled as “EXPERIMENT ROOM 1 A”.

“We keep moving,” Reeler orders, advancing through the hall, not giving the doors second glances.

We move down the hall where two forks branch off from it. OFFICE BLOCK 1 A, OFFICE BLOCK 1 B. Not where we’re headed. We traverse down the hall until it expands into a large, pristinely white room, with another, smaller room situated within it.

I glance around the corner, and see a hall leading out of in both directions.

“If somebody walks in, we’re completely exposed,” I tell him.

“Yeah, so we oughta get into that room right ‘ere,” he points to the central room.

I nod.

Reeler pulls out his walkie. “Oi. Rieka, you still got the footage?”

“Yep. What’d’you need?”

“It’s like a room with another room inside it. Not really sure. Past the first level of experiment rooms.”

“Alright hold on.”

Through the crackling walkie talkie, I hear several buttons clacking and the sound of Varan talking with Malyk.

“Ok yeah I’ve got a visual. Stick your hand out the hall.”

Reeler complies.

“Yeah I see you. You need that inner room?”

“Right.”

“Ok, ok… yeah I’ve got it. There’re two guys in there. I can’t tell if they’re arms, but there’s some sort of machine. Lots of tubes and pipes and stuff.”

“Blowup spot?”

“No, don’t think so. It’s too high up and not guarded well enough. If they have guns, they aren’t very big.”

“Ok send the others down here, you stay up and man the screens.”

“No need sir. They’ve got there own monitors in that room.”

“Security footage?”

“No don’t think so, but I don’t doubt that Varan can tap into the feed.”

“If Varan was the tech guy, why were you handling the cams?” Reeler asks.

“Cuz you told me to,” Rieka laughs. Her damn cute giggle.

“Dumbass, get down here.”

“Right. Over and out.”

Reeler clips the walkie to his belt and we move back down the hall. In a few moments, the rest of the group arrive. Varan and Barrlin carry lumps of clothes. “Got their uniforms sir, might be useful to get in close.”

“Good thinking. Now, we got to storm this shit, black ops style,” Reeler says with a grin. I pull out my gun but keep my finger off the trigger. Not killing anybody today.

“Alright. Three…two…one…GO!” Reeler shouts and we tear towards the room.

I’m not running my fastest. Don’t want to be the first to get shot down.

Rieka’s the first to notice that there’s no door, and swing to the right, followed by Malyk and Barrlin. Reeler, Varan and I go left, only to find that there’s no door on this wall either. We meet at the far wall, and Reeler body checks the door without breaking a stride. Only it doesn’t budge.

“Who’s there?” one of the men inside calls.

“Um… your manager! I’m… here to check on your progress.”

“I am the manager, are you from Natural Extracts?”

“Um…” Reeler stutters. “Ah, screw this.” He fires a round a the door, destroying the lock and kicking it open, then rattling out into the room. One of the men manages to get a shot out but misses all of us before he slumps to the ground. We hustle inside.

“Shit Reeler I think you shot one of these,” Varan comments, staring at the hissing mass of pipes and tubes.

Reeler isn’t listening. “Akila. Akila do you copy? We’ve hunkered down are you ready?”

“Affirmative. We’re nearly ready. These guys are going to shit themselves when they see this!”

“Got it. Buzz in when we should move. Over and out.”

“What’s the plan, boss?” Barrlin asks.

“Varan and Rieka, I want visuals of every hall leading here. Find the blowup point.”

“Should we barricade the door?” Barrlin asks.

“How are we gonna get out, dipshit?”

The earpiece on one of the shot workers buzzes. “Hey Hansfar, we got shots coming from your room?”

Reeler snatches it up. “Weapons malfunction. Sorry ‘bout that, won’t happen again.”

“Yeah, I hope so. And could you check on the guys up at the security room? Top level, please. They’re not responding.”

“Sure, will do,” he nods, tossing the earpiece away.”

“I got visuals,” Varan calls.

“Alright, everybody put these uniforms on,” Reeler instructs.

I pull the black clothes with red highlights on. They look like a mix between a uniform and a jumpsuit. We coagulate behind the mess of pipes, facing the monitors.

“Holy shit, holy shit,” Varan panics. “We’ve got people coming!”

“Relax, act natural,” Reeler instructs.

Malyk scoots closer up to me. “We’re gonna die here, right?”

I sigh. “Probably. I dunno, I’ve got terrible luck, I’ll probably make it out alive.”

I’m happy that my words crack a smile onto his face.

Then the ground shudders. The rolling chairs slide across the room, Varan is nearly thrown off his feet.

“Did you feel that?” Akila asks through Reeler’s talkie.

“Yeah. The hell did you use? Are we good to go?”

“Yep. Move out, we’re heading out now. I’ll try and draw them away as far as possible, buy you guys some time.”

“Alright. Over and out.”

Through the monitors I see the two men heading towards us stagger and exchange a few words, then continue to us.

“Sorry mates,” Reeler mumbles, shoving a new clip into his assault rifle and mowing them down through the door.

“I found it! I freaking found it!” Varan exclaims. He points to a huge molten mass, swirling around in what I think is a centrifuge. “We mess this up, they’re done.”

“Alright, you got the way?”

“Yeah, just down any of the three halls behind us, get into the elevator towards elevators with the blue doors. 8th floor under. Get down and you can meet up via the catwalks.”

“Malyk, Rieka, you guys are going left. Kallix and Varan, right. Barrlin and I will go straight. Move out!”

Like a military unit we pour out of the room and split. A school of fish diverting around a coral.

“Holyshit, holyshit, holyshit,” Varan mutters as we run. Sweat drips down his forehead.

“Don’t panic now, alright,” I tell him.

Six men cut across the hall ahead of us. He yanks the barrel of his gun up, ready to open fire.

“Chill dude! Don’t freaking panic.”

Varan’s breaths are coming quickly. “I’m not panicking. I swear I’m not panicking.”

“This is why Rieka chose you to talk to Mr. Shei you know,” I tell him as we resume our leisurely jog.

“Shut up. That guy was boring as hell,” Varan mutters as we walked. “I can’t believe you left me with him! I’d rather be talking to my mother in law!”

“You’re married?” I ask incredulously.

“No, but if I was, I don’t think I’d like talking to my mother in law. You ever…”

“Hey!” calls a man in uniform similar to ours, except with a silver lined cap. “All units up top, we got an attack.”

“Do I shoot him,” Varan asks, breathing like a dog on a hot day.

“On our way, sir!” I call.

He nods and leaves.

“Oh shit, we’re gonna die,” Varan sighs.

“Compose yourself, you nervous wreck. Why’d you sign up for this? Don’t you and Deqar do bansilin anyway?”

“Yeah of course! Bansilin is awesome, but nothing compared to the street cred of pulling this off.”

“Varan, nobody’s going to believe you were even here if you act like this.”

“No, you’d be surprised how reputable I am on the streets.”

“What? You? Reputable? Those two words don’t coincide.”

“Hey look it’s the elevator!” I declare.

Varan presses the button and it opens instantly, allowing us inside. Half a minute of awkward silence passes, when we stop.

An automated voice speaks up. “Swipe ID card.”

“Shit.”

“Swipe ID card.”

We search our pockets.

“Swipe ID card.”

“Now what the hell do we do?” I demand.

“I don’t know! You think I saw this on the security cams?”

“Well what do we do?”

“Just shoot it!”

“How is that supposed to help?”

“Try!”

I let out an exasperated breath, aim the handgun and fire. The thing hisses, and the doors slide open. Before us, is a towering, very armed guard with his gun pointed directly at us.

Bullets fly.