Harry woke up shirtless, lying on a cold metal table. His head was throbbing, and he reached up to find a wicked, sticky gash on his forehead. He sat up, and the room spun as he swayed on the table. Looking around the room, he jerked when he discovered a massive headless behemoth lying on the ground next to the table.
“What the hell happened?” he asked aloud, his voice echoing in the empty room.
He was startled by a grunt behind him, and he turned to find another behemoth, this one with only one arm, which was straining to reach the elevator button on the wall. Harry jumped down and recoiled as his bare feet splashed in a pool of blood puddling out across the floor from the headless corpse. He leaned down and grabbed the discarded shotgun beside him, then walked towards the mutant as it finally pressed the elevator button.
“Who did this?” Harry asked the walrus-badger as it rolled over and leaned against the wall beside the elevator.
It did not answer him, and he halted a few feet short of the doors. Suddenly they opened, and the mutant crawled into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. The tormented atrocity began wheezing terribly as blood continued to pour from the gaping hole where its arm used to be. Harry darted in just as the doors began to close. The beast took up all but a small corner of the elevator, staring unblinkingly at the wall as the elevator rose. Then it rasped out a last shaky breath and grew still as its unwavering determination finally gave out. Harry shuddered at what he had just witnessed, saddened that the man had died so badly.
Harry gripped the shotgun tightly as the elevator began to slow. It opened up on the back of a bookshelf. A sliver of light spilled in around it, and he tentatively pushed it open on silent hinges. He barely had time to register the scene he discovered there. Almost as if he were in slow motion, he raised his shotgun and pulled the trigger.
. . . . .
Kane opened his eyes to the sounds of a gunfight. He looked around the room dazedly, then jumped as he glanced to his left and found the red, dead eyes of Dr. Angelino staring up at him from the floor. A loud shotgun blast snapped his gaze to the window, and he saw Harry leaning out of it, shooting at people down below. He tried to get up but found that he was still stuck securely in place by the webbing. Loud banging drew his attention to the door, and he saw that a bookshelf had been wrenched down and pushed in front of it.
“Harry! Commme cut mmme free,” Kane mumbled after Harry risked another shot.
Harry whirled around, and a grim smile crossed his face. “About time you woke up, Dad.” He made his way over and sank to one knee. Withdrawing a strange scalpel-like knife from his pocket, he began sawing through the webbing as another loud bang sounded from the door. The last of the webbing cascaded to the floor, and Kane got carefully to his feet. His mantis characteristics were gone again, but he remained covered in armored shell plates, and tusks were still sticking out of his mouth. That explained his altered speech, but it did not make his dry mouth feel any better. He rummaged around in the doctor’s lab coat, withdrawing three guns. Handing two to Harry, he then pried another out of the doctor’s curled dead fingers. His clothes audibly tore as he bent over, and he swore at the inconvenience of his enhanced muscle mass.
“Guard the door. I’m going to try and get Mitchell on the line,” Kane said as he ran to the desk and picked up the phone. Only the military had phone lines nowadays, and he was surprised that the doctor had a private line in her office. She must have been well connected to pull this off. Kyle answered, and Kane demanded to speak to Mitchell right away, but he was forced to wait as Kyle went to track him down. A shotgun blast rang out from the hall then, and buckshot tore through the bookshelf that was blocking the door. Confetti from the destroyed books swirled around the room, and another blast added even more. He did not know how many were coming, but they were running out of time.
Just as he was about to put the phone down, Mitchell picked up. “What’s going on, Kane? I figured you would be on your first scavenger run with Harry by now.”
Kane struggled to speak for a few seconds, and finally giving up, he whipped into his zen state and dumped the elephant attributes. He was going to have to find an easier way to swap out his attributes; his head swam and he swayed on the spot as the tusks absorbed back into his mouth. Shaking his head to clear it, he ran over the highlights of the last two days. Mitchell promised to send backup ASAP and began barking orders in the background as he got off the phone. They were a minimum of an hour away, at the least, and even any flyers he could send Kane’s way were probably thirty minutes out. At this point, thirty minutes was a lifetime; he had to find a way to make it last.
Moving to the window to see what he could glean about their predicament, he watched a few more guards fight their way in through the exiting scientists. Turning to face Harry, he suddenly saw the bookcase with the hidden, private elevator behind it. An idea sprang into his mind, and he darted over to the evacuation map to see if he could locate a security room. He found the room on the first floor, but it was close to the main entrance, so he decided to ride the elevator down to the second floor and try to sneak in from the stairs.
He called Harry over, and they quickly began piling all the shelves and other furniture against the door. Once that was done, they rode the elevator down two levels and got off on the second floor. Creeping carefully through the halls, they spotted a scientist with his arms full of papers coming out of a room and entering the stairwell they were heading towards. The scientist did not see them as they slipped in behind him and followed him down. Kane cracked the stairwell door, scanned the hallway, and caught the back of the scientist disappearing ahead of them, trailing papers behind him.
“All clear,” he said as they exited the stairwell.
Slipping into the security room, they found a guard throwing stuff out of a dusty cabinet. He grunted as he found what he was looking for, yanking an old police battering ram from the depths of the cabinet. He stood up and whirled around just as Kane bashed him upside the head with the shotgun. The man dropped like a stone, and they swiftly closed the door and pushed a desk in front of it.
Surveying the room, they hit the jackpot and spent the next few minutes strapping on the gear that had been taken from them. Fully equipped again, Kane rummaged through the armory at the back of the room and crowed with excitement when he discovered a CZ 75 TS with an orange grip, replacing the blue pistol he had lost. Pulling his pistol out, he slipped the CZ into his holster and shivered with pleasure as Harry laughed and rolled his eyes.
“What? One day, you will find the gun that feels like it was made for you, and it will hurt to shoot anything else.”
“Okay, Dad, if you say so,” Harry said with another eye roll.
Armed to the teeth, they moved the desk away from the door, and Kane checked his watch. Eight minutes had passed, and even if this was a good spot to lay low, they could not risk other guards coming by and cornering them. It became a game of cat and mouse as they snuck through the lab, tracking down straggling guards. They incapacitated two that they found when they went down a hallway that branched off from the main entrance, and they were able to incapacitate two more at the entrance itself. Those two had smoke grenades, and just as Kane got an idea, Harry started sniffling.
Kane had been waiting for this inevitable breakdown. Quickly approaching his son, he put an arm around his shoulders. “The adrenaline is wearing off, and it’s going to hit you pretty hard in a minute. But remember, you only killed one person—and if you had not, I would be dead. I know that doesn’t make it feel any better, and I never want you to think that killing is a good thing, but sometimes it is a necessary evil.”
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Harry sniffled again, then rubbed the tears from his cheeks and stood up a little straighter as he nodded. Kane squeezed his son’s shoulder reassuringly, then filled him in on his idea. He knew it would be rough on Harry if the plan did not work properly, because he might have to kill again, but it was the only way they would survive the rest of this encounter.
Returning to the top floor via the main elevator, they looked out the door to see eight guards staged outside the room.
“You know the plan,” Kane whispered. “Pick off any that I miss. You should be able to stay out of this fight, but I can’t make any promises.” He hugged Harry tightly, then slunk out the door.
Kane tugged the pins from the two smoke grenades and tossed them down the hall as he took off at a run. He shot the guard that looked up at the sound of the sliding containers, then managed to shoot one more before they were obscured by the smoke. He holstered his pistol, and his katana made a gentle rasping sound as it slid free. Then he began the sword dance he had taught Harry, and the screams of dying men echoed around him as he followed his senses to hew them like stalks of wheat. His movements displaced some of the fog, and as he came to a halt at the end of his dance, he knew he had missed one.
Abruptly turning around, he saw Harry watching him from the stairs. Feeling bad for Harry, he lost focus at the very moment that the remaining eagle-headed guard raised his rifle. Kane was always fascinated in these moments when time seemed to stand still. He watched Harry raise his gun as well, but he hesitated just a moment too long, and the muzzle of the guard’s rifle flashed three times. Kane felt the bullets punch into his chest and out of his back as he dropped slowly to his knees. Suddenly Rebecca was beside Harry, and he saw the muzzle of Harry’s gun flash as the guard’s eagle head exploded into a shower of feathers and gore.
Rebecca was running towards him, but he heard nothing other than the roaring in his ears. Strangely, his vision of Rebecca flipped sideways, and he watched her drop to her knees and slide the rest of the way to him. She picked his head up and put it in her lap, brushing the hair from his eyes as she pressed down on his chest. Harry was beside her then, tears pouring from his eyes as he spoke without making any sound.
Kane opened his mouth to say something—but he could not get his mouth to open. His eyelids were getting so heavy now, and he wondered why he was so sleepy as Rebecca seemed to be screaming in his face. She slapped him roughly, and his view jerked instantly to the side, but he did not feel it as he looked up into her eyes again. She hastily pulled out her knife, and for a moment Kane thought that Rebecca was going to kill him for some reason, but all she did was slice a gaping hole in her own wrist. She moved it to his face, and he watched the blood spurting from the crimson wound that resembled a mouth, now kissing him on his own.
Salty warmth spilled down the back of his throat, and a beautiful grey gyrfalcon flew down and landed on his chest. Harry and Rebecca did not seem to see it, and she sent his head snapping to the side again as his eyes closed on their own, despite his best efforts. He opened them again to see the bird pecking at the cavernous red hole in his chest, and as it pecked, his ears started ringing.
Rebecca was screaming. “Goddamn it, Kane, I can’t lose you too! Do not leave me, you stingy bastard! You do not get to die! I love you, Kane…”
“Dad! Come on, Dad, hang in there… You still owe me a scavenging run. You promised, Dad!”
“… Did you just say you love me?” Kane croaked.
Harry and Rebecca both collapsed onto his chest, and he barked out a yelp as the pain there finally exploded into being.
“What the fuck happened?” Kane asked as he tried to sit up and failed.
“I hesitated, Dad. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
“Nonsense, Harry. You have nothing to apologize for. You had already saved my life once today. Asking you to go for two would have just been selfish of me,” Kane said with a grimace. “Are they all gone?”
“I think so,” Rebecca said as she helped him to his feet.
Harry and Rebecca got under his arms and helped him sit up. About twenty minutes later, after he felt better and had filled Rebecca in, they helped him walk to the stairs. Rebecca had gathered up Kane’s fallen weapons while they waited on him to recover. They slowly descended the stairs, and as they approached the main entrance, a group of armored cars rolled up. Mitchell got out of one, and the Warden got out of the other. After a quick glance at the surrounding carnage, the Warden drew his sidearm, and Mitchell withdrew his custom sawed-off eight-gauge.
“Whoa there, Warden. Let’s get all our facts together first before we start waving weapons around,” Mitchell said while waving his own weapon around.
The hyena-man glared at Mitchell for a moment before nodding for his men, who had been pouring out of the vehicles, to do the same. Mitchell nodded to his own people, and a fragile truce descended as the tension ratcheted up to an unbearable level.
“What happened, Kane?” Mitchell asked as the Warden’s men began moving into the building.
“I came to prove my innocence to Dr. Angelino, but she took one look at Harry and lost her damned mind. She threw me into Zone Three to feed me to the mutants she was breeding there, and I barely managed to escape in time to save Harry as she was cutting his head open to remove his brain.”
He nodded to his son at this, and Harry swept his long black hair away from his forehead. The dotted lines drawn there were still clearly visible, and the gash had finally stopped oozing blood.
The Warden nodded solemnly, but he had a gleam in his eyes that Kane did not like. “She’s been getting desperate the last few years as she failed to get the results she wanted or some such. I don’t know what her problem was, but my men have reported some very strange requests from her. They will stand down for now, but I suggest you clear out of the BQZ and never show your face here again, Kane. Some of my men might hold grudges for what you did to their comrades.”
Kane nodded, then they all climbed into Mitchell’s vehicle, and he banged on the hood to signal to everyone that they were heading out. Mitchell ran them all through a debrief on the ride back, and after a quick stop at the infirmary to get checked on by Rosa, Kane and Harry hopped in his SUV, which one of the other scavengers had driven back for him.
Back home, Kane stood in the shower until the hot water ran out; he had to use an entire bar of soap to get the stench off his skin. He felt like he could still smell it as he went downstairs to check on Harry. Hearing him crying in the basement, he grabbed the carton of ice cream they saved for special occasions, two bowls, and two spoons, then he walked down the steps to help Harry cope with the trauma of recent events.
. . . . .
Two days later, Mitchell showed up at his door with a huge grin on his face. Rebecca had only just left, and Kane reckoned it was just her coming back for something. Mitchell was a little hurt when Kane’s smile faltered at the sight of him.
“Well, maybe I should just leave you alone—oof!”
Kane slugged him in the stomach before he could say any more.
“Rebecca just left, you goof. Why would I be more excited to see you than her?” Kane laughed as the grin on Mitchell’s face returned.
“That’s fair, but I come bearing great news!” he exclaimed. “President Smith wants to bestow a commendation on you for uncovering such a horrendous conspiracy involving someone on his staff.”
“Oh, yay,” Kane said sarcastically.
Mitchell rolled his eyes. “I know you hate ceremonies, but this will be a good thing. He wants you to come to the White Tower so that you two can discuss the details of the ceremony in person. I’m actually jealous; I’ve only ever been in the meeting room on the first floor. You get to go all the way to the top of the tallest building in the city and have a private meeting with the leader of our country!”
Mitchell’s excitement was contagious, but Kane still felt a little uneasy, and an idea was nagging at the back of his mind that he could not put his finger on.
“When is the meeting?” Kane asked, letting the notion drop.
“Tonight. You get to have dinner with him in the Presidential Suite.”
Kane groaned. “A formal dinner?”
“Of course it’s a formal dinner! He is the president of Newmerica.”
“Will it just be him, or are his wife and kids going to be there?”
“Just him. His kids are all grown and have lives of their own. His wife, on the other hand, has not been seen in a long time. She is in seclusion at the president’s mansion in the Hamptons. She had a bad reaction to her first consumption and has only been seen by a select few ever since. It’s all very hush-hush, if you know what I mean. I think she’s a Dumper like Mira was, but that’s just the tabloids whispering stupidity into my ear. Thomas has been begging me to stop reading that garbage for years.”
Kane smiled at his best friend and wrapped him in a sudden hug. Mitchell squeezed him back but pulled back after a few seconds. “What’s up, Kane? You’re normally not open to much affection. Unlike Bill and Amy, you have never been that fond of hugs.”
“Nothing is up. I just want you to know that I love you, brother.” Kane smiled at him.
“Weirdo,” Mitchell said, but he crushed him into another hug, and Kane gasped for breath as Mitchell laughed and let him go. “I love you too, man. Now go get ready; you need to be there in two hours, and you need to look presentable. Do I need to go get Thomas so he can dress you up properly?”
“NO!” Kane immediately exclaimed, and Mitchell laughed the entire walk back to his SUV.