The man they called Jackson stood in the dark, driving rain and stared down through infrared binoculars at the concrete storage units below.
Jackson was not his name. Jackson had been the first thing that popped into his head a lifetime ago when he’d first been asked for a moniker, and now it was a mask he put on every time he made the world a little worse.
The others, some of the younger kids in his unit, didn’t quite grasp that. They wanted codenames and calling cards and kill counts, to be talked about, to be known. But you could not survive in this life, the man who called himself Jackson knew, if the murderer inside you was admirable. If it had traits you were proud of. That only made the mask cling tighter. Made it sink deeper into the flesh.
“What’re we waiting for?” one of the men behind him murmured. Lone Star, cryomancer, twenty‑four. One of seven crouched behind him on the hilltop, in black rain jackets, helmets, masks. Young. So very young.
“The leash will snap.” Jackson made no move to look up from his binoculars, from the sight of three distant men on guard – two at the gate, one on patrol. The patroller with a German Shepherd.
“How do we know that?” the young soldier whispered. Jackson almost scoffed. How did they know? Ignorance was a thick rind on this one. You never asked those sort of questions. You were given a fact, and you took it. Only dead men peered behind the curtain.
As if on cue, four hundred yards away the dog leash snapped. The German Shepherd took off, barking furiously in the downpour as it chased after some imagined shadow. Even in the darkness Jackson could see the handler swearing, see him sprinting to give chase.
“Move. Now.”
The soldiers broke cover, flowing down the hill in a low run. Jackson’s joints popped under the weight of his gear and his weapons, but the discomfort was distant, belonging to another. Mindless life; mindless movement.
They reached the fence, ten feet tall and topped with barbed wire. Eli stuck his bare fingers through the chain links, barely flinching as he diverted away the electricity. Calder held up his hands and filled the air with a shimmering dissipation, shielding both he and the electromancer from view. The others were already at work with bolt cutters. Within seconds, they were through.
“Quickly.” The man named Jackson led the remaining five, crouched low, rifles raised, following not the lying light and distending shadows but the unfailing pace-length of his boots. Fifteen forward. Twenty left. Fourteen right. Thirty. He knew the maps. Had them memorised.
Three minutes until the guard.
Jackson slid to a stop, eyes rising. The lockup stood before them, a wide roller door of horizontal beige slats. An unremarkable unit in an unremarkable storage facility in some boonie town, so dull your eyes slid right off it. Anonymity, Jackson knew; the best protection. So many terrible things were kept locked up in storage centres like these, half empty, half commercial. Trusting to rain and rust and cobwebs to provide the protection no amount of titanium could match. Except the security always gave it away. Always too much security. Three guys, on a storm‑swept night? Management could never truly let go. Therein lay their downfall.
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He checked left and right the adjoining unit numbers and confirmed they were in the right spot. There’d been no doubt, but it paid to be methodical. Jackson knelt down and took hold of the steel padlock. Thick, but simple metal. He squeezed, and felt it splinter in his hand.
Inside, he motioned. He wrenched up the roller door, stepping into darkness, and his men followed. Goggles flashed, no lights, no torches. Every man moving to where he was needed, pre-ordained. Packing. Disassembling.
Big goddamn thing, Jackson pondered, staring at the unit’s contents. Looked worth the risk. This was the thing about these extractions – sometimes you were stealing something so innocuous. At least this was big effing machinery, lots of metal, spikes and silicone, a bulbous centre bigger than a person. Felt like something substantial. Like the sort of gear you’d need to emulate a power.
Emulate a power. The man named Jackson, if he’d allowed himself the freedom, might have smirked at that notion. People were always going on about how difficult it was to emulate powers; ain’t never no way, ain’t never been done, blah, blah, blah. Yet man had been making fire with stones and axes far longer than they’d been streaming it from their fingertips. Electricity pre-dated 1963. Was it really such a big deal, so unthinkable, that there would be other advances? It was more just the way things lined up. Sure, blocking out electromagnetic signals was a power, one the core ran almost every op. But powers didn’t invent it. This machine just evened things. That didn’t strike him as implausible.
Jackson looked at his wrist. Thirty seconds. He gave a short, low whistle and motioned for his troops to hold. The men fell silent, packing down or having already stowed their pieces of the machinery. Jackson reached forward and pulled down the roller, cutting them off from the storm. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. Six breaths fogged quietly in utter dark. Outside, the rain continued pouring, hammering on the sheet metal. And underneath its pranging came another steady sound. Tap, tap, tap.
Jackson had pulled the unit’s door down most of the way, but without the lock it rested slightly out of position. Maybe two inches up, when you drew close enough. Subtle but distinct.
The guard spoke like pre-destiny.
“Hey. What’s-”
They moved two halves of a pair, in one fluid motion. The guard, reaching the outer handle on the door and flinging it up. Jackson, in the same moment, his hands extending, reaching out from the waiting darkness to grab the man’s face on either side. No scream. No shouting. Simply a wet, bloody crack, and chunks of a face slipping between his fingers. Like he was seventeen and breaking a watermelon.
There was no talk, no ‘get him inside’. Jackson simply turned and in one easy motion slid the body against the ground, motioned for his men to go around him, and watched as the soldiers made quick pace out into the rain. Jackson stepped around where the body had come to rest, wrapped his arms round the machine’s centre console, and lifted it carefully about a quarter inch from ceiling and floor. He carried the half tonne easily, feeling nothing but a slight tingle in his hands, no pain, no burn.
He stepped outside and in an instant the rain came back crashing down. Cold and damp, that unmistakeable drowning earthen smell. The second he was out his deputy lowered the door and affixed a new lock, identical. The first remained with the deceased, the dust and plundered darkness.
Move out, he wanted to tell them, wanted to give vicious snarling orders that breathed to life the sucking tightness in his chest. But he didn’t. Words weren’t needed. His men stalked out the way they’d came, sealed the fence, and withdrew with what they had gained beneath the veil of the howling storm.