A shrill scream escaped Karu's lips before her father even finished speaking. Her emotionless mask had shattered at the sound of Eryn's execution, and as she flew into rage, her weapons spat their anger into the wall of flesh at the door.
The guards flinched, orange barriers flaring to life as her weaponry impacted, holding their ground as fire and explosions rocked them on their heels.
"Eryn! Eryn!" she screamed, closing the distance to claw at them with wrist-blades, not looking at them but through them, desperate to catch any glimpse of her childhood friend in the hall. I had to kick myself into the fight and throw her backwards as weaponry tore into her, bullets and lasers scouring deep gashes in her chestplate while a dozen or more taser darts protruded from her insulated armor, clicking uselessly.
"Karu get a hold of yourself," I yelled in her face. She threw a palm into my temple for my trouble, and I was left seeing stars while she bounced back to her feet and began tearing at them again. Through my swimming vision, I saw the guards donning gas masks and knew what was happening next.
I kicked out the window, surprised to find myself crossing the room in a single step again, and then swore as black goop erupted from the wall to seal the breach. Why the fuck would a senator have structure foam built into his house, unless he was expecting people to be trying to break into it? Maybe he just did it for his office...or maybe his enemies were more dangerous than I'd thought. But whatever the reason, we weren't getting out this way.
Karu was pure adrenaline and hate as I'd never seen her before. Even at her worst, she'd always been in control, angry and spewing hate, sure, but shrewd and calculating, relying on her experience and training at all times. Here she was just tearing away like an animal, not caring about how many times she was hit or shot, or how many she faced.
It was terrifying. To see someone you always thought of as calm, icy even, completely lose it. I should have been worried she would die there, but the way she was screaming and fighting, I was honestly more scared of her.
But even the most enraged person couldn't fight without air. We had to get out of this room before we all choked in here. As much as I didn't want to turn this into an Exhuman event, I readied my powers.
"Just wait a minute," AEGIS said in my ear.
"For what?" I asked, my powers primed and ready to go. I'd spun up a strong magnet that would have ripped the guards -- and Karu -- through the door, and given us a lot more room to work with in the hall.
"You're doing a magnet, right? Can you do something else?"
"AEGIS, I'm sorta fighting here."
"Lia plugged me into the computer. If you let off any major blasts, it'll knock the terminal out. I'm pulling data as fast as I can, but I still need time. Try to fight without doing a ton of collateral damage. Please."
"It's a fight, I argued, wincing as Karu got jabbed in the side with a gun butt, and then wincing twice as hard as she grabbed it and, still in his hands, speared the other end of it straight through the guy's cheek. "I can't afford to be holding back."
"Well this data is the reason we came here," Lia interrupted. "Blow it all to hell if you want, but that makes this whole operation pointless."
She sounded as cold and tense as I expected Karu to be, and I realized she was talking to me from under the desk as much as through comms. I was glad she was out of the way, and her slipskin would probably protect her from gas if it came to that--
I saw a guard outside with a grenade launcher, holding it over the crowded doorway and trying to find a shot. Again, with speed that surprised me, I was there in the thick of it, next to Karu, and trying to push through the door as much as she was, as much as the guards were pushing back. In the distance, from here I could hear Idris yelling orders in the background.
With a foomp and a smoke trail, the grenade passed over the heads of the others.
And with a crack-hiss and an explosion, my lightning swatted it out of the sky. They gave me a concerned expression, before one of Karu's flailing elbows nailed me in the opposite temple as before.
"Can one of you stop her infernal screaming?" AEGIS asked. "Kinda hard to focus."
"You're welcome to try yourself," Lia said.
"Karu, hey, Karu?" AEGIS asked. Karu responded by shoving both of her blades through a failing barrier along with the man wearing it, and then ripping them apart...along with the man wearing it. "She doesn't listen to me," AEGIS sighed.
"Can we not joke right now? A good friend just got shot," I insisted.
"SHOT?" Karu screamed, whirling on me, blades splattering blood which hissed against my shield. "MURDERED. IN COLD BLOOD. A MAN SHE DEDICATED HER LIFE TO."
I opened my mouth to respond but she'd gone back to tearing at the terrified men. For one moment, she pushed them back far enough to enter the hall, and in that moment, loosed an incendiary rocket of some kind, setting the wall opposite ablaze, and setting off sprinklers and alarms through the building. I saw Lia emerge from the desk long enough to pull the computer down with her, out of the water.
"Karen! This house has stood for generations of Irensides before you, you will not bring it crashing down now. Control yourself!" Idris barked at her over comms, the same steel in his voice that made her snap upright by reflex.
But she didn't snap upright at his voice this time, she howled at him like a rabid dog, pushing into the hallway, cuts and punctures across her body, unnoticed. The line broke and the guards moved back, scattering towards a new line at the end of the hall.
She didn't chase them. Once they left, she didn't move at all, except to fall to her knees. I gave Lia one final glance before following Karu into the hall, my swords hovering with me, putting my shield between her and the men.
And between them and the body lying there. Eryn's eyes and mouth were open in surprise, glistening with water from the sprinklers now. She'd been shot twice in the chest, crimson blooms through the satin. She was a certain kind of still I'd learned to recognize, a kind I knew Karu would never mistake.
Karu herself was bleeding a lot, stroking the hair and face of her friend with a disturbing rapidity, almost clawing at it. We were still in danger, I knew. We couldn't dwell here without putting ourselves in even greater jeopardy.
But I'd also never seen Karu like this. Pain like I didn't know she could feel carved on her face, mutterring reassurances to the dead body as she cradled it. This was Karu's oldest friend. In her mind, maybe even her only friend. They'd grown up with each other in this house, and their differences had only made them grow together.
And now she was dead. This lively, wonderful, rambunctious girl. Because Karu's father was a fucking lunatic, who'd kill his own servants over disobedience. He was supposed to be a man of law and order, in a civilized country. We had police and lawyers, and he'd just turned a gun on her instead.
In a way, I was numb to it. That was how things were dealt with in my world. Soldiers fought and Exhumans killed and died. But this was a maid, a chauffeur, a servant girl. Her biggest concern should have been being fired or sued or arrested. Nobody should have to worry about getting shot in their place of business, no matter how bad a job they did.
This was supposed to be a civilized country. Eryn's murder wasn't just shitty and violent and pointless. It was fucking un-American.
Whatever my experience with Idris had been before, however charming I'd found him, however of much of that had been an act or not, none of it mattered any more. To me, his true colors were there, seeping crimson on satin. If this moment had broken Karu, I'd be there for her. I could be her instrument of revenge. He wouldn't get away with this.
I turned away from the body and rose, my exoframe splashing in the pooling water as I advanced on the line. It was clear many of them hadn't yet gotten the memo there was an Exhuman in the house, as my power sparked around me and stray tendrils of electricity jumped into the pools of water and crackled. I heard panicked voices rising as I advanced, Idris' yelling them down in counterpoint.
And then I was deafened and blinded, as gunfire went off, echoing in the enclosed hall, dazzling as my shield reflected a thousandfold on wet surfaces. If I was on my own feet, I would have reeled, but instead, the exoframe kept walking, inexorable, one solid step after another.
My swords came to bear, twenty or so, flashing into existence. The line began to break before I even reached it. I let them run, too many people on Idris payroll had already died here tonight. As some fled, they caused others to turn as well. Panic and cowardice was infectious, and these were just home security guards, not professional soldiers, not XPCA. To them, I must have appeared as certain as death, the guns and grenades in their hands as useless against me as Idris' orders in their ears.
A few stayed, and I cut them down, my blades darting as though hungry. And as I strolled past them, any remaining resistance broke, the rest scattering at random, drifting sideways and away like seaweed washing ashore, aimless, but always pushed by the tide.
And in the back, I saw him. Idris, yelling, threatening, grabbing hold of a man and screaming in his face, and being shoved off for his efforts. He was redder than I'd seen him before, angry beyond words, his blond moustache quivering and spit flying from his lips.
With superhuman speed, I advanced on him, there before he even knew I was coming. The rest of those between us scattered and fell, scuttling away while he turned to me and sputtered.
"Look around you," I insisted, and did so, taking my own advice. The wall still burned, Karu's hellfire concoction immune to the water slinging on it. Near us, an oil painting, maybe thousands of years old was streaked and running, the face of the man pictured completely unrecognizable as the deluge ruined the ancient work.
Men and women in black security uniforms were still fleeing, some apprehensive, some without so much as looking back, all getting away from me, from death, leaving him to face it alone. This was his power, I thought. This is what money got him. Loyalty to the dollar meant they couldn't value anything more than their own lives. If they died defending him, how would the spend their paychecks?
Behind us, where Karu sat kneeling, crying, Eryn's body was just a dark shape, cradled, half-submerged in the inches of water. That was this man's daughter, that was his servant, this was his house, his people, his power.
"What I see," he said, moustache twitching, "is that you ruin everything very efficiently. You and my rebellious daughter. If I have erred here, it is only in thinking that I could ever benefit from being associated with an Exhuman."
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"You killed someone here tonight, man!" I screamed at him. "You killed Eryn, your own house-servant! A girl you've known since her birth, who's lived in your house her whole life, who dedicated her days to serving you and only you!"
"I have no use and no remorse for a woman who would betray me. Eryn was dead to me the moment she picked her loyalty to my daughter over her loyalty to me. Her death changes nothing."
"You're a cold, sick bastard," I muttered. "Open your fucking eyes, old man. I didn't tell you to look around so you could see the damage I can cause, or what your daughter did. I want you to see who you have, who is left standing by your side here at the end."
I cast a glance around. The last of the security was gone. Police or XPCA still wasn't here yet. It was just the three of us in this hallway.
"You might hate Karu, you might think she's a real twisted piece of work. I know I do sometimes. But the fact of the matter is, when shit hits the fan, she's got me. I've got her. We've got our friends and we've got each other. What do you have? Power? Authority? A trillion dollars in an oversea account? And who does that buy you, in the end?"
"I've got power like you could never dream of, boy," he growled at me. "This is my town. I know every judge and every lobbyist, every police commissioner and every general. I can do anything I want, have anyone I want. You think you're great, waving your lightning in the air, you don't know a fucking thing about true power, son."
"If you're so powerful, then live through this," I intoned, my blades surrounding him. "If you have so my friends, where are they now?"
"You really think you'll kill me?" he said, almost laughing. "You'd have to be a complete moron. The XPCA would never stop hunting you. You'd be as good as dead."
"I'm an Exhuman," I said with a sardonic grin. "Legally, we're not even alive to begin with. What else have you got?"
He snorted. "I forget how big your tiny problems are. You realize, with a few words in the right place, I could make all your Exhuman worries just disappear."
"Bullshit. I'm maybe the XPCA's most wanted right now."
"Yes, yes, because of that whole affair with you chasing Dragon. I'm well aware."
I felt my brow narrowing at him. "What do you know about that?"
He laughed at me. The water on his forehead looked like sweat from from the heat of my blades in his face, yet he was laughing at me. I felt a very strong urge to just run him through right then and there, but I also wanted desperately to hear what he had to say.
He began to walk, stopping as he neared my blade. "Do you mind?" he asked. I hesitated for a moment and then swooped it slightly out of his way as he advanced to a sopping blue chair under the oil painting, gesturing towards the other for me to sit.
"What is this?" I asked, not sitting. "Just going to waste my time until the XPCA arrives? Is that your master plan?"
"My boy, by the time the XPCA arrives, my master plan is that you don't fear them and they have no reason to arrest you. What I want is what I've always wanted, to talk and for you to listen."
"Well I'm not falling for it now of all times. Just because Karu's too preoccupied with the person you murdered doesn't mean my ears are any more pliable."
He laughed again, full-bodied, like Karu did. A sound that carried easily over the sloshing of water. It grated on me to hear it sound so similar to hers.
"You've never stopped to think, to wonder, how it was so easy for Dragon to infiltrate the XPCA?"
"What do you mean?"
"Don't play dumb, son. You saw it, I know you did, otherwise you'd have no place being in that aircraft boneyard in Utah. The XPCA parted for him like the Red Sea, careful movements and maneuvers in their ranks, weakening their fortifications around a specific device, and then when he arrived to take it, they just let him do so."
"How do you know all of this? This just happened, it should be secure information. And Dragon and I are both still active enemy combatants -- there's no way this should be in civilian hands."
He preened his moistened moustache and smirked at me, condescendingly.
"Athan...I have data," AEGIS whispered in my ear. "You're not going to like this."
I put two fingers on my comms for Idris' benefit and asked "What?"
"We've traced the connection from Idris to IkaCo. But Idris has a lot of contacts, too many contacts in the XPCA. He's...it looks like...he's got his fingers in all kinds of pies over there. It's insane."
"So what," I asked him as much as her. "IkaCo owns him, and he in turn, gets all messy behind the scenes with the XPCA? For what? A fancy paycheck? The ability to say he can point the XPCA whichever way he wants?"
"That latter one might be useful to you right now," he grinned. "But no, I'm a true patriot. We're working on a solution to the Exhuman problem, forever. Ikeda and I are men of vision, and the XPCA, God bless them, they work hard and are well-intentioned, but they have no endgame. All they do is spin their wheels, as they have for the last hundred years."
"This sounds like--" Lia gasped.
"Blackett," I growled.
"Yes, I was a fan of his. And a sponsor. Quit the meteoric rise he had, wasn't it? Almost...deliberate, you might think."
"You son of a bitch."
"Careful now," he said, as my blades flared. "Remember what happened last time you killed an important man in your crusade for 'justice'. You don't want the whole world turning on you again right now, do you? Especially with your sister in the house this time…"
"You son of a bitch," I repeated. "You'd dare threaten Lia? After you tell me to my face that you're the one responsible for letting Dragon through? And for Blackett? Is there any reason in the world I shouldn't just kill you right now?"
"Because," he grinned, his broad teeth gleaming in the light of my blades "I can make it all go away as easily as it was brought down on you to begin with. Imagine, your whole history swept clean. Your Exhuman powers, practically erased. A new life, not just for you, but for your sister as well. Where you'd never have to look over your shoulder. Where you could have your life back, your whole life," he nodded towards my leg.
"Yeah, I already did that once," I spat. "It was ruined by Dragon, an asshole you let through my life apparently. "Anything good that might happen would be ruined as long as bastards like you still run things."
"Unless we bastards are looking out for you. Do you remember how things were for you in the XPCA? How you were managed, cared-for? Even in the web of Exhuman hate, nobody ever gave you trouble, did they? That could be your life again."
He shrugged dramatically and patted his pockets until I stuck a blade to his neck. "Or, you can kill me if that will really help you, a murder in cold blood, and you can spend the rest of your life on the run, losing pieces of yourself here and there until they finally catch up with you, and you die, an inglorious death somewhere, forgotten by everyone except those you hurt along the way."
Of course, I didn't believe him. I didn't think for a second that once he was behind his little line of soldiers again he'd even for a second consider fulfilling his end of the bargain. His words of second chances and new leaves meant nothing to me.
But that didn't mean he was wrong either, entirely. We were here for data, killing him would do nothing productive except squashing a guy I didn't like or trust...and people who walked around killing others just because they weren't very likable were called psychopaths, which I was probably not. And even if I wasn't going to go back to college and have a happy life in the sun, I had to admit, the prospect of the XPCA and Dragon not being on my heels was a fairly incredible one. The whole time in San Francisco, I felt like I was just swinging back and forth between feeling worthless and a failure in my past, and like the XPCA would find me and finish the job any second in my future.
"And out of all of this, what do you want?" I asked. "You're not a guy to offer a deal without a profit."
He smiled broadly. "I know you are all likely planning to lay siege to IkaCo in a misguided attempt to 'rescue' your friend Kaori. As you may know, I have quite close ties with that corporation, and it would be in everyone's interest if you did not."
"Everyone's?" I asked. "Everyone but hers you mean."
"I assure you she is quite well there. Perhaps you never heard over all the petulant screaming, but all her father wants of her is for her to return home and help run the company business. Not to let private matters slip, but Ichiro recently had an attempt made on his life, and has realized the importance of family, even those once estranged." He glanced down the hallway where Karu was still kneeled. "She is not being treated poorly. Your efforts may actually endanger her significantly."
"How are you doing?" I asked into comms, tapping my comms and turning from Idris for a moment to glance at Karu. She didn't respond, but AEGIS did.
"I think we have what we need. There's...a whole 'nother thing here, I don't want to get into over comms, but suffice to say this doesn't end with just Idris and IkaCo. I think we've stumbled onto something huge here. You need to be really, really careful, Athan. We're talking...world stage type events here."
"Like what happened after Blackett died?" I asked, thinking of Trish and all the others who suffered or died because of him, and because of me.
"Yeah. Like that. Don't do anything rash."
There was a clatter and a splash as Karu rose and the body fell out of her arms. It lay face-down in the water, dead and abandoned, and there was a flash of red as Karu turned towards us.
"Don't do anything rash," I whispered. I saw Idris swallow heavily, and Karu began her approach, her white-plated boots sloshing through the water. At the end of the hall, I saw Lia emerge from the office to watch.
"So what say you, m'boy?" Idris said, extending an arm to me, as his eyes remained locked on Karu. "I can save you the trouble of your girl Kaori, maybe even use my influence to weasel you in a visit or two a year, so you can make sure she's brushing her teeth and eating right, and you all can rest assured that the XPCA or Dragon won't bother you in the slightest, so long as you're keeping your noses clean."
Karu's boots kept clacking and splashing as she continued her advance. It was hard to tell if Idris was sweating or the water had just chosen to cling to his forehead. He stuck his offered hand out another inch towards me.
"Of course, the deal is only valid if I'm alive," he said, through a smile.
I nodded back at him but didn't take the offered hand. Instead I took a step aside and let Karu take my place before him.
"Father," she said, tersely.
"Karen."
"Apologize."
"What?"
"Apologize, to me, now. For Eryn." Her voice was so cold, it seemed the water running off her visor might freeze.
"I…" he glanced at me again, his offered handshake wilting in the air. He took a look at his daughter's face, half-hidden behind the visor, and then at the guns on her wrists, hanging there so casually, like they were just a part of her. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what, Father? Elucidate."
"I'm sorry I...I acted in rage. She betrayed my trust, you know. I couldn't have her in my house after that. And...with what she knew…"
"I asked for an apology, not excuses." Karu raised her right arm, guns pulsing to life.
Idris' moustache bristled as he thought, staring down his daughter's barrel with water pouring off of him like a fountain. Sirens wailed and blue lights flashed in the windows as police arrived, and I thought I could hear a VTOL in the distance.
After a minute, he spoke again.
"I'm sorry. She was a difficult girl, but a hard-working one, with her heart in the right place. She was too smart for this house, too smart to be just a servant, and that gave her a nose for trouble that I've always taken issue with. But I kept her around because of you, my girl. Because she was close to you, and every time she followed my orders a little too literally, or replied with just a hint of lip, I knew she'd taken it from you, and it was almost like having my daughter back again."
His tone darkened. "And for you to become a common criminal, for you to choose Exhumanity over humans at long last, for you to be on the run from the FBI and the XPCA both, and then come to me, not even for help, but to raid my house, to take from me, the father that raised you, a petty thief using your own knowledge of your home to slip inside...I was not lying when I said you were dead to me girl, and with that, so was she. My heart hardened to her, and when it did, I pulled the trigger. I regret it already. But not as much as all the mistakes I've ever made which led you down this path."
The two of them stood and faced each other and waited, Karu's guns still thrumming ominously. Lia approaching, her steps delicate in the water. I saw flashes of the VTOL in the window and heard men moving outside, far below.
"He made us a decent offer," I told Karu.
"I heard," she replied.
"Then what are you thinking?" I asked.
"I am trying to decide if a single word of what he just spoke was true. Just one single word of genuine remorse for the dead, that's all I would need to decide his is a life worth continuing."
"Oh," I said, and swallowed. "Well."
Karu was kind enough to wait for my mouth to be closed before she unloaded three different firearms at once into him, detonating her father into a haze of red.