Somewhere in this tiny janitor’s closet, a fly buzzes. It’s been buzzing around the room for what feels like three lifetimes but in reality has been about twelve hours. It doesn’t sleep and it doesn’t eat and it doesn’t drink, it just flies and flies. Xiuying isn’t exactly sure about the intelligence of a fruit fly but she’s swatted at it enough for it to realize that it shouldn’t land anywhere in her general vicinity.
The room’s air tastes like sweat and heat, the carbon dioxide condensed to where she can chew on it like stale crackers – and not even saltines. The only source of light in the room is a small lightbulb dead-center on the ceiling, it’s gentle glow a palliative yellow-orange. It’s not much but she can make out the words inked onto the pages of her books.
Like someone planning a vacation she thought she’d read more than she actually did. Even though she can read north of six hundred words a minute the stack of books to her right is still profoundly tall. Both heigh and content would be intimidating to anyone not named Xiuying Ku. Books with titles such as “Bulgaria’s Three Wars” and “Marching Towards Armageddon” and “Echoes of the Revolution” and about topics such as early 20th century Bulgaria, the Paraguayan War, and the Two Haitian Revolutions. On her left are the completed books – ‘Strategic Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerilla War’ and ‘Strategic Problems in the Chinese Revolutionary War,’ both by Mao Tse-Tsung, and War.’ The third is ‘Fireforce: One Man’s War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry’ by Chris Cock, and while he may possess a truly unfortunate surname it is quantitively funny that a fellow named ‘Cock’ is recounting positive experiences fighting for Rhodesia.
The book currently in her hands is an Arabic-language copy of “The Romance of the Last Kingdom” by a writer named Xu Ming who died a decade and a half ago. It is a dumb, stupid, sappy love story that was recently adapted into a film which is now China’s highest grossing film in its cinematic history. The prose is simplistic and straightforward, the plot predictable, the Mandarin-to-Arabic translation sub-par, yet she’s read the book a dozen times and still cries at its climax.
And yet as she tries to read, a gentle snoring from uncomfortably close by keeps distracting her from the pages. The fly darts uncomfortably close to the woman’s head, covered by a mane of brown hair so dense it verges on waterproof. Her back is arched into a crescent akin to either a croissant or a feline – Xiuying isn’t sure where the food simile came from. Hunger, most likely, but she doesn’t feel particularly hungry.
Suddenly the woman stirs, rolling over in her sleep from one side to another, her catnapping figure now facing Xiuying. Her hair has a pink ombre to it, fading from it’s original brown near her ends. Her figure is wrapped in a Chrysomallos-infused diving suit identical to the one Xiuying wears; even horizontal she can still make out the woman’s hourglass figure. She isn’t a particularly graceful sleeper, though, one arm lays folded under her head, her mouth sits open and drooling on the concrete floor stained with God-only-knows-what, and her hair is splayed like a mop. Xiuying figures she’ll clean herself up quickly enough.
Opposite the sleeping, snoring woman sits someone who makes much less noise. Music emanates from a pair of lapis lazuli headphones over her ears; the colour matches her hair. Across the room, Xiuying can make out heavy, menacing synths and sharp hi-hats and lyrics about knife crimes with rhymes so elegant that it sways Xiuying into thinking that whoever they were talking about almost certainly deserved it.
Xiuying shakes off the grime and snoring and tries to refocus her mind on her book and then her phone rings. Instead of a vibration in her back pocket – her wetsuit doesn’t have any pockets – the ringing vibrates her entire left forearm as her TACPAD lights up. Over her left arm is a shooting guard-style sleeve, white against the black of the wetsuit. Embedded within is a thin, flexible touchscreen, similar technology to the whole ‘bendy phones’ trend that was in vogue a decade ago. All that the screen displays is the caller’s name – “Scott Davison.” Xiuying figures that she better answer it.
“Xiuying?”
Her finger is still on the ‘ACCEPT’ button. He’s all business. So is she.
“Sir?”
“You’re good to go, Xiu.”
For a moment, she’s puzzled. The door isn’t that thick, a jumbo jet flying two hundred or so feet off the ground would’ve been audible, right?
“Sir?” she repeats.
“There’s been a few delays, the flyover isn’t going to happen. Nothing for us to worry about.”
That isn’t going to stop her.
“What about our air support?” she asks.
Her TACPAD vibrates again – her arm feels increasingly numb with every buzz. This is the price to look cool. Off to her side, the sleeping woman rouses at the sound of her voice. Another name pops up on the screen – Ashara Wolfe. Xiuying accepts and merges the call with her right hand, then shakes off the white noise within her arm’s nervous system.
“Ash?”
“The drone’s powering up now. Ten minutes until it’s on station.”
Ashara Wolfe sounds exhausted but it would be surprising if she didn’t. She was probably up all night again, gaming, or working on a spreadsheet, or working on a spreadsheet for her games. To punctuate all of this, she loudly yawns over the line. Luckily for Xiuying yawns are only contagious in-person.
“Did we miss anything?” she asks.
“Not much,” Ash replies.
“About ten hours worth of waiting,” Davison adds.
For a moment, Xiuying belays her response. She mutes the TACPAD and sweeps all of her books into her pack and trades them for her weaponry – a silenced 5.8mm submachine gun procured straight from the Chinese State’s equivalent of a skunk works and a mass-produced 9x19 handgun, also silenced. She press checks the handgun – bullet in the chamber – and loads a 50-round magazine into the subgun, racking the bolt back to chamber a round.
It feels natural in her hands. She’s never held one like this before. Maybe it’s meant to be. Maybe because the model is a downsized version of the bullpup QBZ model she’s awfully fond of.
She unmutes the wrist-mounted screen.
“We’re ready.”
In this case, ‘we’ means ‘her’ but Davison doesn’t need to know that.
“Sounds good. Keep it clean,” the boss replies.
“Always do.”
He ends his portion of the call but Xiuying’s TACPAD screen stays lit. It blares white, piercing through the dying yellow-orange bulb. Ashara remains on the line and through the electromagnetic spectrum Xiuying feels a question on the other woman’s lips.
“Is Sophia there?” Ash asks.
Well, not quite. Luckily it’s easily solvable. Xiuying takes two steps forwards and winds up next to the woman with the bi-coloured hair. She nudges her with a boot’s steel toe. Her eyes flutter open, a vibrant, verdant green framed by long, full eyelashes.
“Wha…?” It’s the sound someone makes when they’re woken up against their will. She flops on her back and looks up at Xiuying. In return, Xiuying crosses her arms and stares back down.
“Oh,” Sophia mutters. “Mornin’.”
“It’s one-forty-three in the afternoon,” Ashara pipes up from her air-conditioned apartment.
“Morning is a state of mind,” Sophia mutters back.
“Sure.”
“It is!” Her voice is cotton-candy sweet, the kind that would make a man’s heart grow three sizes and send just the right cocktail of chemicals to the brain to stir up feeling of attraction.
Whatever the case, she seems to be awake now. But there’s another person in the room with her. Luckily, she probably won’t take half-a-minute to rouse. So Xiuying walks over and does the same.
“Eva?”
The woman’s eyes snap open, wide, deep brown like chocolate. She looks up and upon realizing that Xiuying isn’t some shadow person and is in-fact her temporary boss, she almost rips her headphones down off of her head and rests them around her neck and hops to her feet like she was struck by lightning.
“yeah”
She appears to be vibrating but her voice is even keeled and lethargic, as if proper capitalization and punctuation weren’t worth the effort. A Liverpudlian accent drips from her lips, and its grit doesn’t much fit her appearance – short and thin like a gymnast, a face gaunt and long with full lips and a smile that’s like a fox’s, whenever she decides to wield it. Too exhausted too today, apparently. Her skin is the colour of the desert sand a hundred miles to the south. A dozen small scars mark her face, old dents and knicks. Xiuying, her, and Tecumseh are the old ones of the group.
“Ready?” Xiuying asks.
“we didnt miss anything did we” Eva replies, shouldering the back and picking up the submachinegun laying flat next to her – something called an PDR, a short-barrelled AR-15-model weapon that had ruler-straight .45 calibre magazines.
“Nothing too important.”
“cool”
Over her TACPAD’s tinny speakers Xiuying hears someone loudly sipping something from a straw. At least she’s staying hydrated. She clears her throat and ignores the pops and cracks in the background as Sophia reassembles herself.
“So, what are we looking for here?”
“A rogue nuclear bomb,” Ash replies matter-of-factly.
“I’m going to assume it won’t just be in a big box labelled ‘nuke,’ right?”
“Be nice if it was. Allegedly it’s a backpack nuke. The drone has scanners so we’ll find it if it’s there.”
“And if it’s not here?”
Ash yawns again. “Not the first time.”
“what are the odds that its actually here” Eva asks.
“Dunno. Intel came from Palantir, so you can do the math,” Ash says.
Xiuying’s eyes are drawn to Sophia, the woman in the midst of a vertical split along one of the closet’s walls that would tear most mortals hamstrings up into ground meat. If Xiuying was the one doing it her hip flexors would be screaming but Sophia just looks back at her and rolls her eyes at the mention of Palantir. The joys of being, what, twenty-four?
She finds it hard to pry her eyes away from Sophia. The woman is effortlessly beautiful in a very active way, the kind where they’re perfectly well-aware of how good they always look. She has flawless skin, golden-olive-brown, the colour of a Caribbean sunset, void of all freckles and scars and beauty spots. She has an hourglass of a figure, stolen from a supermodel and augmented with billion-dollar plastic surgery. Her face is perfectly heart shaped; with full lips that conceal teeth so bright they can be seen from space. She smiles one of those megawatt smiles at Xiuying and she’s momentarily blinded like a psychic grenade went off at her feet.
“So what’ll happen if we don’t find anything?” Sophia asks at Xiuying’s arm.
“Then you’re clearing the biggest traffic jam in nautical history,” Ash says back.
“The boats don’t pay us,” Xiuying replies, having shaken off the effects of Sophia’s flashbang smile.
“You’re Janissaries, nobody pays you.”
A bone-deep sigh emerges from Xiuying’s lips. Yeahhhhhh, is all she can think.
“force composition” Eva asks.
There’s a moment of silence in the room as the trio all examine each other. Xiuying knows she meets the proper regulations; at first glance so does Eva – her gloves and shoes are on, and her wetsuit is zipped up to its apex right below her jawline. She’s violating the ‘official’ rules on hair length just as much as Xiuying herself is and there’s no rules about having colourful hair. Xiuying points to her own neck where a pair of theoretical headphones sit. Eva looks at her sideways. At least they’re not in the way.
“me headphones” Eva says, her Merseyside accent strong. <
“Besides you?” Ash answers. “Dunno. Maybe a hundred.”
Sophia, on the other hand, is a disaster. The wetsuit the trio are wearing is bulletproof against 7.62mm rounds from ten meters and 5.56mm rounds from point blank but none of that matters because Sophia has decided to pull up the suit’s sleeves to her elbows and the zipper in the front that’s supposed to be at her neck is halfway down her chest as if her plan is to distract the Ikhwan with her cleavage. Will it work? Xiuying figures there’s no way to determine how sexually repressed the average Ikhwan militant is without HUMINT and Palantir isn’t going to send out volunteers.
Her left arm is covered with a hodgepodge smattering of colourful tattoos a dozen things unrelated stretching from her wrist to her shoulder underneath the wetsuit. The tattoos might dazzle one young Ikhwan, but the older, more hardcore members?
“What’s the layout of this place anyways?” Sophia asks Xiuying’s arm, ignoring the obvious problem at hand.
“Get ready,” Xiuying responds before Ash can pull up the blueprints to the fortress.
“I am ready!” Sophia says in return. She’s not.
At her hip rests her submachinegun, an MP12 that looks not unlike an Uzi.
“Got it – it’s six stories all set around a central elevator lift.” Ash merges back into the conversation with the fortress’ blueprints. “It spirals upwards and downwards from the road which should be one level above you. Open sides; the drone should be useful.”
But Xiuying isn’t done with Sophia yet.
“Your suit?” she asks.
Sophia looks down, then back up at her. A gloved hand goes towards the suit’s zipper and instead of pulling it up like Xiuying requested she pulls it down to her navel. Toned abs can do an awful lot for a person but they can’t protect against even the smallest of calibres. She has a black tattoo of a lotus flower underneath her chest, curving around the bottoms of her breasts. She pulls out a necklace from between the crevasse that the wetsuit creates with her chest, a gold chain holding a gold and silver crucifix. They’re already crucifying the man, best not to suffocate him too.
“Do you feel like getting shot?” Xiuying asks.
“I’ll be fine!”
“What exactly is your plan here?”
Sophia smiles at her, lower wattage. The smirk of someone with a scheme.
“I don’t know how you’re not overheating like that,” she says. She has a point – the wetsuit combined with the humidity and temperature has turned it into a sauna. But a bulletproof sauna.
“Are you really going to do this? Now?”
Sophia sighs and returns the zipper to where it was prior – imitating a V-neck on a t-shirt and not where it is supposed to be. The hems of her sleeves remain at her elbows.
“I’ll be fine, Xiu, I’m a better shot like this anyways.”
“You’re going to get shot and I’m going to have to explain to Jake what happened.”
The mention of Jacob widens her eyes. She quickly pulls the zipper up to her neck and pushes her sleeves to her wrists. Xiuying locks eyes with Eva – she rolls her eyes at the youngest woman’s antics. If only Tech was here, so there could be some fucking professionality. He’d probably sort out Eva’s headphones too.
Now properly suited up, Sophia speaks towards Xiuying’s wrist again.
“Ready, Ash?”
“Yeah. Drone is just over the Tigris now, coming from the east. Thirty seconds, give or take. Stay low-key,” is Ash’s reply, all-business. “I’m gonna do a few pass-overs with the scanners. If there’s no signs of a nuke we’re weapons-free.”
“didnt you say that theres a hundred blokes on this thing” Eva asks.
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“I’ll handle it.”
“Handle it?” Sophia interrupts. “You’re not doing anything!”
“And neither are you. I’d recommend you-”
There’s a triplicate knocking that shakes the door from the outside. The only door in and out.
“-get moving.”
Xiuying and Eva, despite the eight-inch height difference, exchange a look. Sophia’s green eyes go wide. For the first time since she woke up, she’s quiet.
The knocking repeats.
There’s someone at the door.
“You guys there?” Ash’s tinny voice asks.
Xiuying drops her voice to a low whisper, barely audible. “There’s someone outside.”
<
He tries the doorknob, turns it and faces resistance. He jiggles the other side of it. It’s locked, from the inside. Whoever’s on the other side is smart enough to realize that something’s in there that isn’t supposed to be. His knocks are exchanged for full-force shoulder barges. The steel door shakes and the hinges creak with every charge but it’s holding, for now. Xiuying figures that it won’t last particularly long.
<
Xiuying figures that now would be a good time to get going. She dons her helmet – two-part contraptions far more complicated than they really needed to be; a jawguard that wraps around the wearer’s ears and connects both at the nape of the wearer’s neck and at where their occipital and parietal bones fuse, then a genetic splice between a welder’s mask and an astronaut’s helmet overtop connect magnetically to the jawguard and can be pulled up to air out the wearer’s face and down to make sure nobody domes them. The outside of the faceplate, at least for Xiuying, is pitch black – faceless by design, only an uncaring void. Eva’s is cobalt blue, similar to her hair; Sophia’s is rose-gold.
Xiuying’s TACPAD makes a noise, something on Ash’s end probably, and she immediately ends the call. Her handgun finds itself nestled in her right hand, practically braying for blood.
The other two take up flaking positions on each side of the door. The man’s shoulder barges become rhythmic, a steady ‘THUD-THUD-THUD’ resembling a kick drum and Eva’s helmeted head nods to the beat. One hand is at her hip, around the grip of a holstered 9mm.
Sophia has her subgun in her right hand and her left on the door’s lock, gently unlocking it, her right thigh jutting out just enough to keep the door from flying open.
THUD
Eva’s hand reaches out to the door handle. If she twists downwards it’ll open and allow the man to come crashing through. The hinges bend and protest but do their job and keep the outside man, well, outside.
THUD
The two look at her, faces invisible behind impenetrable visors. Xiuying doesn’t need to see the looks on their faces to know that they’re waiting on her.
Is this really the best idea? She asks herself.
It’s the only one we have.
Her left-hand forms itself into the shape of a pistol, her index and middle fingers the body and her thumb the hammer. Sophia’s leg moves itself out of the way.
THUD
“Now.”
ꙮ
Eva, lightning quick, pulls down on the handle and pulls the door towards her and a man, dressed in a navy-blue jumpsuit that flutters with movement, practically flies through the door and Xiuying moves faster than Mercury. The handgun hisses thrice, two bullets in the chest and one to the head – the classic Mozambique – and before the blood leaves the confines of his skull she’s moving forward out of the janitorial closet and she comes face to face with another, dressed similarly, holding an AK rifle in his hands, barrel pointed directly at her midsection.
For a moment, the world stands still, her breath frozen halfway up her throat.
Her legs stop on a dime and she raises the pistol and pulls the trigger twice, the silencer hissing accordingly as the gasses released by a pair of small explosions deep within the barrel escape. The first bullet carves through his right shoulder and the other pierces his left and he staggers backwards, the AK clattering to the ground at his feet and she pulls again, the bullet flying from the muzzle and bloodily through his face, through his eyeball and nerves and skull and grey matter and brain, and back out the other side of his head pulling strings of gore in its wake. His lifeless body stumbles backwards against, then through, a rusted-through railing with an ancient coat of yellow paint. There’s a splash from far below as his corpse hits the water.
The breath frozen in her throat thaws and escapes, and she’s on the move again.
“Xiu, wait!” someone says from behind as she leaves the two in her dust – her handgun finds a place in its holster under her left arm and the SMG finds itself nestled in her hands – but she’s moving faster than her brain can process.
A corner approaches and she drops into a baseball slide, coming up in a crouch and peeking her head low around the corner – two guards stand aimlessly, one walking back and forth to stave off boredom. They’re dressed in the blue jumpsuits as the former – one’s armed with a carbine AK and pacing, the other smoking a cigarette, leaning against a more structurally-sound looking railing. She figures that they didn’t hear the commotion earlier. She re-checks the weapon’s magazine – 50-rounds strong. The weapon is select fire; she sets it semi-automatic. No point spraying ammo everywhere at this point.
Her left eye closes, her right looking down the sights. A horizontally extended octagonal scope sits atop the weapon’s picatinny rail and she exhales and fires on empty lungs. Her shoulder feels the weapon’s recoil twice and both drop within a split-second of each other – the carbine clattering loudly to the ground, the smoking guard forwards against the rail then to the side in a wet ‘plop.’
<
Fuck me, Xiu thinks and two more Ikhwan arrive. They’re in more conventional attire for a militant group – t-shirts and cargo pants and boots and bulletproof vests, various magazine holders and holsters layered atop. Nothing covering their heads, though.
Two more trigger pulls give her a one-day body count of six and climbing. Four bullets from the QCW, six from the handgun – Tech’s always a bastard about ammo checks. Someone’s gotta be.
Her thoughts clear and footsteps echo on the pavement behind her and she starts moving again – she scoops down to pick up the AK carbine, just in case, and she continues in stride towards a menacing set of stairs. She slows and a hand grasps her shoulder and she turns with her hand shooting to the holster under her armpit and she sees her helmet reflected in pink.
“Xiu!”
Looks like the conversation has finally caught itself up.
“Come on! What are you doing?” Sophia’s voice sounds panicky, like they royally fucked up in the last minute.
Voices ring out from above and Xiuying yanks the two into a small alcove, her knee bashing aside a wheeled mop bucket.
“What are you doing?” she asks back.
“that guy didnt have a weapon” Eva says.
“They might’ve just been a janitor or something!”
Xiuying stares at them behind her visor.
“Did you miss something in the briefing?”
Both women share a look. Their visors reflect off of each other, creating a temporary infinite-mirror effect.
“The people here said that they’re Ikhwan. They let all the hostages go a week ago, the only reason anyone is still here is because they’re Ikhwan.”
“But–”
“There. Are. No. Civilians. Here.” Xiuying’s voice is clipped, sharp, and stern. Sophia looks down at her feet, hesitant underneath the visor. Eva, on the other hand, shrugs her shoulders. She’s older than Sophia, much more experienced. She’s had messier hands.
Sophia’s hands rest themselves unhappily on her hips, so Xiuying puts a hand on the youngest woman’s shoulder.
“Are you gonna be alright?” Xiuying asks. Sophia’s helmet is motionless, unbetraying any emotions underneath.
“Can we talk about this after?”
That receives a nod. Xiuying can only imagine Sophia stiffening her upper lip, perhaps scrunching up her nose to suppress the welling at her tear ducts. Then,
<
Gunfire rings out from above, at-first the crack of AKs and other assorted rifles, then the heavier thumps of large-calibre machineguns, 12.7mm and upwards. The screech of rockets joins the chorus and their explosions act as drums. A vibration shakes Xiuying’s left arm down to its bones. It’s not the detonations.
The screen of her TACPAD glows – Ashara Wolfe is the name displayed. Whoops.
“What’s up?”
“What’s your problem‽” It’s less of a question and more of an accusation. “Why’d you hang up on me?”
Over the radio Xiuying can hear the helicopter’s twin 12.7mm miniguns spinning up, a distinctive whirr that sends the Ikhwan scattering - The WHUPS of its blades quickly fills the air again and its black silhouette swings down to the floor above Xiuying and the reaper unleashes its scythes.
The dual weapons’ reports sound like a swarm of demonic hornets and as it roars it sprays the deck above with a torrent of burning-hot lead. From below, Xiuying can hear the screams of dying souls, and the corpses leak rivers of blood which form small reservoirs in the craters each bullet forms. Ash sweeps the drone to the right and the guns cut down everything that finds itself in their way.
And just as suddenly as it started the guns fall silent, replaced with the whupping of rotors that dims as the unmanned ‘copter scurries away. Xiuying steps back in front of the stairs and the two form up on each side of her, forming a phalanx as they advanced onwards and upwards.
They emerge on the main floor – the connecting road between the two lifting roads is blockaded with sandbags and concrete barriers and forms a θ, a Greek theta. In front of the three sit the city of Nineveh, its skyscrapers sitting silent. In the foreground lays a matanza, dozens of souls torn to shreds by a downpour of 12.7mm rounds. Troublingly, some are fully intact, and upright, and moving.
One turns right in Xiuying’s direction. Her neurons all fire, screaming at her to raise her weapon and pull the trigger.
<
Xiuying’s trigger finger pulls and the weapon blows a small hole through the man’s head, in through his open mouth and out where his spine connects to his brain, but she wasn’t fast enough. The surviving Ikhwan, maybe seven excluding the dead man, turn in his direction and then in their direction, and raise their weapons, automatic AKs and Uzis and Skorpion machine pistols. They spray sloppy fire at the three and they scurry behind sandbags and fallen concrete pillars for cover.
She finds herself next to Sophia, a hail of rifle fire from four or five different directions all converging above their heads. There’s the electronic buzzing of a grenade being armed, loud enough to ring through the audio of a battlefield, and Sophia pivots right on her left foot out into the open and sidearms a grenade in the general direction of three Ikhwan who yell –
<
– and scurry in every direction, out into the open where Xiuying picks off two of them with ‘clean’ headshots and puts the third in her sighs before Eva fires and takes her first of the day. Her bullet cuts through the soldier’s neck and high-pressure blood sprays out forwards and behind him, and he falls to his knees grasping for his neck until Eva follows up and takes the top off of his head.
The roar of Satan’s hornet swarm screams out from the other side of the structure and the trio move forwards against the four remaining Ikhwan - Eva darting left and Sophia right in a sort of pincer maneuver and as the Ikhwan redirect their fire Xiuying pops up and levels her sights at whoever stands out the most and fires. Two go down with two bullets and the Ikhwan redirect their fire back at Xiuying, letting the other two handle the Ikhwan – Eva does it precisely, two bullets to the head, one to kill and one to guarantee; Sophia not as much, riddling her kill with a dozen rounds and he falls backwards like plywood, frozen with some sort of early-onset rigor mortis.
Xiuying exhales and inhales. You can’t forget to breath because its both a conscious and unconscious process but it’s easy to be overwhelmed in the fury of combat – sometimes the unconscious breaths just aren’t deep enough to get the necessary oxygen to the brain.
There’s a lull in the noise, at least nearby to Xiuying. The rest of the fighting is happening stories above, and once the trio have caught their breaths they make their way around the theta and to the next set of stairs. The reaper’s scythe carves over their heads as they move, reducing flesh and blood and soul into assorted limbs and meats and stains on the floor and remnants of concrete. It’s just as bad as the first floor and Xiuying finds no other path forwards other than to step in puddles of ichor, nearly ankle-deep. Behind her, Sophia suppresses a gag as her foot kicks against a head detached from the rest of its body, lifeless eyes forever stuck open, brown eyes staring beyond oblivion.
“looks like a fucking pollock painting” Eva says, quietly, and they continue upwards.
The third floor holds more of the same – a maintenance floor with alcoves and closets for various kinds of equipment, but no doors and barriers stood a chance against the drone’s miniguns. There simply aren’t any bodies left, just fragments, arms and legs, hands and heads, torsos and what those torsos should contain, all strewn about with no regard for their purpose.
A surprised yelp emanates from behind Xiuying and she whirls one-eighty with enough force to tear ligaments. Her knee, strengthened from years of childhood ballet, doesn’t complain and Xiuying raises her QCW at a motionless Sophia.
Her head is stuck looking down and Xiuying follows her gaze to find a man. Or what’s left of him.
There’s no fucking way he should be alive – he’s missing both legs above the knees and one arm but he’s not just alive, he’s grasping Sophia’s ankle like it’s a life raft. His bicep flexes and what remains of him drag themselves ever closer to Sophia. His eye shine pure gold and a rasping fills the air. It takes Xiuying a few seconds to realize that his raspings are words, words that he’s trying to say.
“Bab-e-sciatan, bab-se-sciatan, alep, Bab-e-sciatan, bab-se-sciatan, alep, Bab-e-sciatan– “
Eva steps over and puts a bullet through his head. He’s quiet after that.
Sophia shakes her ankle free, the dead man’s hand giving up its last grasp.
“What did he say?” she asks.
“i dont speak arabic” Eva replies.
“It wasn’t Arabic.” Xiuying isn’t sure. Her Arabic wasn’t perfect but whatever he was saying didn’t feel like it. It felt older, somehow. But the roar of helicopter guns silence any further conversation and they leave the dead man behind.
The four floor lies above, shredded like the last but still fiercely defended. There’s still a dozen or so men fighting, spraying fruitlessly at the helicopter which darts vertically and horizontally like a hummingbird. Xiuying puts a rocketeer in her sights and pulls the trigger and it catches the man square in the jaw. Normally it’d be clean, but his trigger finger exerted enough downward pressure milliseconds before the bullet crashed into his mandible to loose an old RPG round. He falls back, still holding onto the launcher’s tube and the rocket screeches upwards and slams into the ceiling above and, contrary to all the safety measures built into the round, detonates.
It shakes Xiuying’s teeth to her roots and leaves behind a blue-violet cloud that looks like a nebula, electric thunderbolts lashing out at anything they can tough.
<
Aether rounds, Xiuying thinks. She steers clear and the other two follow her lead; her to the right and the other two on the left. They slowly leapfrog their way forward, one side laying down covering fire while the other moves up and then exchanging. The QCW is fully-automatic now – Xiuying plans to burn through all three spare magazines and two hundred bullets she brought.
“what is this shit” Eva asks.
“Aether rounds!” Sophia loudly replies.
“oh” Eva says. Sophia hurls a fragmentation grenade upwards as Xiuying rushes forwards and it detonates, sending a pair of bastards flying off to the side with holes torn through their figures, old surplus Iraqi Army-era combat vests not standing a chance against modern grenades.
“okay”
The fourth floor is cleared in a hail of gunfire and they move onwards to the fifth which lies entirely empty. Gunfire sounds like the inside of a thunderstorm overhead and the three make their way around the theta as quickly as possible to get to the sixth floor, the top.
Looking upwards from below the stairs they see not concrete but gorgeous blue sky, cloudless today. The LAH-8 swings around unlike anything else in the sky, appearing to violate a dozen laws of aerodynamics. The lack of warm bodies inside helps, so does Ash knowing the drone’s limits. It jukes and jitters and reverses course and spins one-eighty whist retaining its forwards momentum resulting in it flying backwards and loops around in gigantic letters, a J and a G and a U and a C and dodges aether rockets by inches and flies through their semi-toxic clouds without a care in the world and it isn’t firing anymore.
“Any word on the nuke?” Xiuying asks her TACPAD.
“Why do you think I started firing?” Ash asks back, enough of an answer for Xiuying. She’d double-check with her benefactor after this. Maybe they could strip that fucking company of its shares.
“My weapons are dry but I can still dance,” Ash adds. “We’re almost done here.”
She sounds calm and in control. She’s also a kilometer and change away, in her air-conditioned office probably sipping on a smoothie. Xiuying would kill for a smoothie. She’d kill for much less right now.
Another rocketeer pops up, tube hoisted atop his shoulder and Xiuying puts him in her sights but a spurt of blood flies backwards out of his head. The muzzle of Sophia’s MP12 smokes and the man falls backwards, rocket primed but not flying.
He hits the ground. His finger twitches, a death spasm, and his body is jolted by contact with the ground. His finger, lifeless, autonomous, pulls down.
The warhead screams from its tube on its kamikaze journey, on a trajectory far off course if he was trying to hit the helicopter. Its gleeful journey ends as it contacts what appears to be a watchtower, occupied by two more militants, and the aether-enhanced explosion completely atomizes the concrete base of the structure.
It collapses inwards upon itself, folding like a tower of cards, and about a ton of concrete and rebar and steel fall on one concentrated location.
Everything slows itself down. Xiuying lowers the QCW in her hands. Turns her head to the tower. So does the militant formerly in her sights at the base of the tower. He turns back. Takes a step forward. She reads utter terror on his face. His gun leaves his hand, at the whims of gravity.
Then something fucking explodes. Everything else that’s exploded today has been popcorn compared to this, it reduces the horrified Ikhwan into molecules of humanity and knocks Xiuying on her ass, far down, pushing her nearly to the edge of the floor and only the remnants of the concrete barrier save her. The shockwave sends the ton of tower that fell upon it back into the sky, vomiting like a geyser, and burns so white it almost wraps around to black again, ocular nerves overloading and refusing to process it.
Then it’s gone, leaving only chaos behind. It yanked Xiuying’s breath from her lungs and she coughs herself back to functionality, shaking her head to get her eyes to properly register things again. A cloud of greenish-yellowish gas hangs menacingly over all, blotting out the sun and sky and threatening to drown everyone like a wave of First World War chlorine gas. Vicious thunderbolts, blood-red with rage, lash out within the cloud as the yellow burns away to reveal the blue-violet of before.
Her insides feel re-arranged; involuntarily repositioned. The Chrysomallos armour took almost all of that pressure wave. She stands and practically feels her intestines plop back into place.
<<¿WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!>> Sophia yells out.
Eva stays silent, even as she helps Xiuying back to her feet. There’s a strange sound emerging from Xiuying’s wrist.
Hold on.
“Fucking get in!” Ash yells over the radio, angry and desperate, and the drone lowers itself to the edge behind the two. Xiuying only heard the last two words but the roar of the helicopter’s rotors is a loud-enough order. She scrambles aboard into the empty cockpit, filled with aether-radio equipment and emergency flight controls and tiny monitors that blink every colour of the rainbow and display information devoid of all context for a non-pilot like Xiuying.
Eva hops on afterwards into the seat next to her and the drone rotates of its own accord, letting Sophia hop her way into one of the back seats, using the skids as a stepping stool. The drone then reverses away and turns one-eighty quick enough to churn Xiuying’s stomach and leaves the building far, far away.
The three breathlessly remove their helmets to catch fresh air and hang themselves out the side of their doorless ride, looking at the scene behind them. It borders on beautiful, or would be if it didn’t kill who knows how many people.
“What the fuck was that?” Xiuying finally asks, the first to speak.
Increasingly far behind them, a chunk of the tower separates from its greater whole and crashes into the Tigris like a collapsing glacier.
“Sophia?” Xiuying asks. She’s the only one who would know.
But she just stares backwards at the scene.
“Sophia!”
No response. It’s hypnotizing.
“Hey!”
She turns and her green eyes widen. Her skin glimmers with sweat, a strange reddish sheen atop her skin.
“That wasn’t a nuke, right?”
Sophia firmly shakes her head, her hair flying and sending droplets of sweat airborne.
“High-yield explosive, enhanced with refined aether.” Her answer is so matter of fact that Xiuying can’t imagine it being anything else.
“intel missed that one” Eva mutters.
Xiuying huffs, awaiting the fucking chaos that will certainly result from whatever this was. She sits back in the chair, far more comfortable than crouching and concrete, and pulls out her books. Romance of the Last Kingdom is buried underneath the book about Rhodesia by the man named Cock, and Sophia explains behind her.
“Ok-so if you dip an explosive's chemical components into an aether-based solution it fundamentally changes the chemistry of those components and they way they react with each other and they tend to react much more violently too and that explains the green colour because the explosive was slow because it had Baratol and the aether-dip...”
Xiuying filters out her voice, trying to conserve her body’s ATP, and she begins to put the Rhodesian book back until a droplet of blood falls onto the soldier on the covers’ face.
Library’s gonna be pissed is her first thought, which dissipates when more droplets fall onto the cover. She feels something condensing like water on her nose and she wipes her face. The glove comes away with a sheen that smells like copper and then something races up her throat and she vomits crimson into the river below. It tastes like blood but worse.
After she’s done, Xiuying brings her gaze to Sophia. She’s stopped her explanation mid-sentence, her skin dripping like she just emerged from the ocean. Xiuying turns to Eva too, and her skin is covered in morning dew.
Sophia’s hand moves to her mouth, and Xiuying notices the small current of claret falling from the corner of her mouth. Her green eyes dart to Xiuying, blood pouring from capillaries, and she smiles her megawatt smile.
Then she also barfs into the Tigris below.