His eyes travelled up to one of the balconies on the right-hand wall. The door there burst open, and there was the stranger. The balconies weren’t decorative after all. Freel raised his gun, but the stranger jumped off the railing and flew across the hallway. It was quite a leap, but the hallway was wide, and he didn’t quite clear it. His chest slammed into the railing of the opposite balcony, and he got a grip on the railing.
Freel fired, and so did the three guards who came out of that same balcony door. Plasma hit the wall and the balcony, burning and blasting pieces out of both. The stranger swung himself up and over the railing, dropped into a crouch, and threw himself at the door. It didn’t move.
Apparently, some of the balconies were decorative.
“Get him, get him!” one of the guards on the other balcony shouted, and now that Kreb had his own gun out the stranger was coming under a five-fold hail of fire. As the balcony crumbled apart, the man leapt again. He rolled as he landed, and reached for his belt. He didn’t seem to have a gun anymore. Instead he detached the last of those homemade grenades.
“BOMB!” a man shouted, and Freel threw himself behind a tree pit.
There was a sharp report, and a sudden cloud, but no real explosion.
“It’s just smoke!” Freel said, and poked out of cover. The dark cloud filled the area the stranger had landed in, and was spreading. Freel fired blindly, though he tried to spread his shots in a smart way. Meanwhile, Kreb just spewed his plasma out as fast as he could, and the guards up on the balcony were doing pretty much the same.
This has to kill him, Freel thought, as fire poured through that cloud. Five of us, no cover that can stop plasma. No doors to dive through, no nothing, not even armour.
A loud crash drew his gaze up. That rust-brown car had dropped downwards, straight onto a big skylight. The frame broke apart, just like in the meeting room, and the pane dropped. It hit the floor with a loud bang, and the car continued downwards. The driver sent it into a spin, and the aft section hit the three men on the balcony. They were batted off the balcony like pins.
Freel aimed up and fired a single shot. He liked to think that it was skill that sent his bolt straight through the car’s engine. Some quirk of dying machinery sent it straight to the side. It smashed into the wall, then bounded from there to the opposite wall on its way down. It spun some more, then slammed down on top of the glass pane.
Kreb shook off his melaurum bag, and drew his chainsaw.
“This is my time,” he said darkly.
“Kreb…”
“He’s got nothing! I’m killing him!”
Kreb charged off, into the still-expanding smoke cloud.
“Kreb!”
Freel followed for a few slow steps, before an alternative presented itself. A door opened on the driver’s side of the car, and out staggered a familiar figure. It was the woman from that rehab clinic. The one with the big ring and the big mouth.
He closed the distance between them in three bounds, then grabbed her and banged her head against the vehicle. It stunned her just enough, without dropping her to the floor. He wrapped his free arm around her neck. His other one pressed the gun against her head.
“Come here!”
He forced her along with him, to the stairs. He heard the whirring of the chainsaw, but only just. The stricken car engine was still sparking and groaning, and the dragon was still bellowing its fury, somewhere off in the distance.
What a mess.
The woman wasn’t cooperative, but she was wobbly, and only barely able to stay on her feet as he moved both of them up the stairs. He shifted to aiming the gun downwards, and compensated by tightening his grip on her. It sounded like she was having trouble breathing, which suited him just fine.
“Don’t try anything,” he said roughly into her ear.
“Mm!”
They emerged up onto the roof, and Freel found himself with a dilemma. He could make a beeline for the Dragon. He had half of the melaurum, and quite possibly everyone who would know he did was dead. But there was the matter of DNA, and his well-known association with Yules and Kreb. He needed the scorcher bomb to clear all that up. And damn it if his very soul didn’t need him to kill the stranger.
So he stopped. A few metres away from the stairs, he stopped and aimed at the rooftop enclosure. The woman chose that moment to start struggling, and he thought she tried to elbow him. He squeezed even tighter, and lifted her off the ground a bit, and now she definitely made a choking sound.
“What did I say, huh?!”
“Let her go.”
It didn’t come from the stairs. It came from another spot on the roof. Freel hadn’t been watching the smashed-open skylight. He spun around, leading with both his hostage and his gun. The roof was sparsely lit, but he still saw a dim figure. He fired a shot, but the stranger had been expecting it and dove. He vanished into cover behind some decorative bushes. Freel fired again, and again, but by now he really was running low on plasma.
There were more bushes around, and enough darkness for him to potentially move between them undetected. Freel decided on a new tactic, and started dragging the woman along with him to the side.
“So, what’s your deal again?” he asked. “Ex-hitman with a guilty conscience? Retired FedCom? Combat cop who got fed up with the system? Veteran? What?”
The bushes didn’t answer. But then, the man had never shown himself to be stupid.
“Something like that, am I right?” Freel went on. “Yeah, I’m right. At least in part, in some detail.”
They were nearing the roof’s edge when something moved in Freel’s peripheral vision. He moved his arm and fired. It was that stupid android, ambling around. His shot blew its arm off, and it just kept on ambling.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Come on, WHERE ARE YOU?!”
“I’m right here.”
Freel shifted his gaze and his aim.
“Right between you and your getaway vehicle.”
Freel could just barely see a silhouette in the darkness.
“So, go ahead: Put a shot through me.”
He very nearly did. But yes, the Dragon was directly behind the man. He’d had the car armoured, but only thinly. A powerful pistol shot at short range just might disable it.
“What happened to Kreb?” Freel asked.
“Let’s just say he… split.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the next step in all of this.”
He lifted the woman up again and took her with him even closer to the edge.
“You give up and do as I tell you, or I throw her off the roof.”
The stranger neither spoke nor moved.
“Did you hear me?” Freel asked. “Your girlfriend here…”
“Not his girlfriend,” she interjected.
“... has a date with the Great Gorge. Ten seconds down, remember?! It’s an eternity!”
“Don’t throw away the only thing keeping you alive,” the stranger said.
“Don’t test me, asshole!” Freel told him, and moved one step closer to the edge. “I am not a nice man!”
“And I am not a victim,” the woman growled, and held up her hand.
That big ring opened a little, and spewed something out. Freel twisted his head away, but it still got into his left eye. It stung like fire, and he screamed. Now the woman did elbow him, and broke free. She started running, and he fired after her. He thought he hit, but then the stranger was on him.
A high kick knocked the gun from his hand, but Freel managed to avoid a followup punch. And as he dropped the bag from his shoulder, he spoke the code word.
“Operation Payback!”
It activated the patch, and Derro-red pumped straight into his system.
Freel roared as a fire lit in his brain. It spread from there to his veins, filling him with strength like he’d never known, and fury that demanded to be let out.
He charged at the stranger and took a swing. The man dodged, and counterpunched, but the buzz in Freel’s head had everything moving slowly. He batted the blow aside and continued pressing, throwing a flurry of wild blows. The stranger blocked, but had no room to counter. Freel’s fists met elbows multiple times, but he didn’t care. His entire being was burning, he was a god among men, and he was going to kill this bastard with his bare hands.
“Come on come on come on come on!”
The stranger ducked, and swept Freel’s leg. He stumbled, but found his footing before gravity could pull him down. The stranger bounded up and managed to launch an attack. Freel saw the punch to his gut coming, and intercepted it, catching the blow on his palm. The man’s other fist flew in for his throat, and Freel caught that as well.
He saw the forehead coming just fine, but couldn’t shift his footing quite in time. The man headbutted him straight in the nose, then followed with a heavy blow straight to the liver. It should have sent a brutal shock through Freel’s body, but the usual rules were on hold for now. His own blow clipped the man’s head, and his next one hit him square in the chest.
It visibly took the air out of the bastard, and Freel just ran into him like a charging beast. He fell on the stranger as he landed on his back, gripped his jacket and shirt, and lifted him up just high enough to slam him back down.
Freel let out a wild scream. He didn’t even know if he was trying to say something. He just had to scream as he killed this man. He slammed him down again, and again. The stranger’s thumb found Freel’s open eye. He didn’t feel the pain, but needed to see what he was doing. He shifted both hands to grip the offending limb, hoping to simply crush it.
The stranger used his other hand to jab Freel in the throat, again. A second jab got his attention, as even the Derro couldn’t stop his breath from catching, and he shifted to grip that other arm as well.
Somehow, someway, the bastard twisted under him, and was able to roll both of them to the side. Then, with a push of his leg, he rolled Freel over onto his stomach. Freel started pushing upwards, but the guy had gotten both his hands on one of Freel’s arms and wrenched it high up on his back. Freel didn’t care. It didn’t hurt. And the rage would not be silenced. He forced himself, lifting the man with him as he went, and threw a vicious elbow. It got the man off him, and Freel turned.
He threw a punch, and another, his fists cleaving air as the stranger just barely kept away. Freel shifted his footing and came in for a monster of a blow. The stranger shifted, caught the punch, and directed it past himself. It sent Freel tumbling past, straight over the edge of the rooftop. Below him yawned the Great Gorge.
“Thank you for visiting,” the android said.
Ten seconds were indeed an eternity.
# # #
John peeked over the edge, just to be sure that the asshole didn’t catch on a flagpole or something. Then he ran over to the only other person who remained in this penthouse.
“Sasie?”
“Oof.”
She’d fallen down from the shot, but was able to sit up on her own. That was a good sign right away.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said in a slightly choked voice.
The bolt had hit her by the shoulder blade, but the armoured jacket had done its job, letting a large patch of itself burn away in place of the wearer. She moved her arm slowly. It made her wince, but she managed a full circle.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
He relaxed.
“I did tell you to just peel away after dropping me off.”
“And I did tell you that I don’t answer to you,” she said with a raised eyebrow.
“You listened to me when I said to wear that jacket. And aren’t you glad you did?”
“Alright, Captain Nitpick.”
He held his hand out, and Sasie let him pull her to her feet.
“So, it’s done?” she asked.
“It’s done.”
“Good.”
“We will need to sterilise your car before we leave,” he told her. “Before the authorities have a chance to look at it.”
She sighed.
“I liked that car.”
“Well, look at what you’re getting instead,” he said, and pointed.
Sasie turned to look at the sportscar-like fancymobile that sat on the visitor’s pad.
“Oh. Hm. Sure could be worse.”
A glint came into her eyes. But it only lasted a few seconds.
“It’s just a shame that the work has to continue tomorrow. We have these assholes off our backs, but someone else will step in to try to pump shri into the neighbourhood.”
John pointed again. She noticed the bag, and the plates that had spilled out of it. The glint came back, more visible as her eyes widened into saucers.
“Is… is that melaurum?”
“It sure is. Enough to do some good for the streets, wouldn’t you say?”
She knelt down and took a couple of the plates in her hands.
“Yes, I would,” she said passionately. “Do you know how to actually sell these?”
“I can dip into some old connections,” John said.
“Well, we’ll get on it tomorrow.”
She shovelled the plates back in and closed the bag. She slung the strap over her shoulder, on her good side, and rose with a grunt of effort.
“Let’s do the car, then get out of here. This has…”
Sasie exhaled, and shook her head.
“This has been completely nuts.”
John shrugged, and smiled a little.
“Depending on your point of view.”