Stiletto (6 page)

“If you come in,” said the voice, “then we can talk about this lovely young lady who wandered in a few hours ago. Perhaps we could work out some sort of deal. Before things get too messy.” Everyone looked to Odgers again. She had her hand to her ear, was talking quietly into her mic. She shook her head at what she heard and then straightened her shoulders.

“Chopra, Clements, Jennings,” said Odgers. “We’re going in.”

“Are you insane?” asked Felicity incredulously. Everyone looked at her. “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s a living creature and it just invited you into its mouth!”

“There is a civilian in there,” said Odgers. “A British civilian. And there is the possibility that we can save her life.” Felicity looked down, ashamed. “Plus, we need more intelligence.”

Well,
on that we can agree,
thought Felicity.

“So, yes,” Odgers said firmly, “we are going in. We are the troops of the Checquy, we are trained, we have supernatural powers, and we have big fucking guns. This is what we do.” The team nodded obediently. In hushed tones, she gave instructions to the Pawns who were to remain outside, outlining the circumstances under which they should act as backup and the circumstances under which they should get their arses the hell out of there and report everything they’d seen to the Rooks.

“And only the Rooks,” she said firmly.

“Understood,” said Gardiner uncertainly.

“Be sure to follow the route we took
exactly,
” said Felicity. “Remember the traps.” He nodded.

Meanwhile, Odgers was eyeing the valve-door-thing grimly. “That entrance is terrible,” she said. “Irregular doors and hatches are always a bitch — you see how it tapers down at the bottom? It means only one person through at a time, and you all be careful, I don’t want anyone tripping.” She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Clements and Chopra will enter first, in that order. Clements, you’ll slide along the wall to the right; Chopra will take the left. Clear your corners immediately. Then me. Jennings, you don’t enter until called.”

Felicity nodded slightly at this. Jennings was the team’s heaviest hitter — if necessary, he’d be able to clear the room completely, but he had a tendency to simply unload everything he had.

“Understood?” They all nodded. “All right!” Odgers shouted toward the opening. “We’re coming in!” She muttered something to herself, but Felicity couldn’t make it out. And then Odgers led the three of them down the hallway.

As they drew nearer, Felicity saw that a thin translucent membrane was draped down the inside. It retracted up silently, clenching itself in bunches.

“Go,” said Odgers, and Felicity stepped through.

Her eyes swept quickly across the room: clean, white, with metal benches against the sides and empty in the middle. She turned to the right and moved along the wall as Chopra came in behind her and covered the left half of the room.

“First corner clear!” Felicity shouted. Then: “I have a target!” In the far right corner of the room was a man, a white figure, his back to her. For a moment, he’d blended in with the white walls and floor. “You! Hands in the air! Hands in the air!”

“Jennings, enter!” barked Pawn Odgers as she moved next to Felicity. Both had their guns pointed at the man’s back.

Jennings came in and there was a pause as it sank in that the man was naked and urinating into a metal rubbish bin. He did not seem even slightly discommoded by the armed soldiers shouting in the room.

“You! Hands on your head!” shouted Odgers. “Go down on your knees and cross your feet over each other!”

“Do you mind if I finish here?” said the man languidly, without turning around. “I have some important business to hand.” Felicity frowned, trying to identify his accent.

“Finish,” said Odgers calmly. “If anything unexpected happens, I will shoot you in the spine. Chopra, Jennings, keep the room covered. Clements, can you scan this place?”

Felicity turned to take all of it in. The first thing that struck her was how
clean
everything was. She’d expected, well, the inside of an animal. Flesh pulsating. Liquid dripping. Maybe some huge organs, or bones supporting everything. At least a smell of some sort.

Instead, she was in a large white chamber whose smooth rubbery walls curved to meet the ceiling and the floor. The lack of edges actually left her feeling a little dizzy, and the effect was compounded by the fact that light glowed gently from the entire inner surface. On the metal benches that lined the sides were several closed metal suitcases. The music was coming, so far as she could tell, from the walls and ceiling, although it had gotten much quieter as they’d entered.

After the derelict grubbiness of the row houses, the bright antiseptic nature of this place was disorienting. To the left of them another membrane hung down, obscuring the area beyond. Chopra and Jennings had it covered.

She crouched down and put her hand on the glowing floor. Odgers darted a look at her, and Felicity shook her head. As she had suspected, she could not read it at all.
It’s all alive.

“You! Pissing guy!” snapped Odgers. “What’s behind the curtains?”

“The living room,” said the man drily.

“Is there anyone in there? Anything I need to be worried about?”

“No.”

“Jennings, that curtain makes me uncomfortable,” said Odgers. “We’ll be going there next, and if anything comes out, you smite it.”

“Yes, sir.” Jennings slung his weapon over his shoulder, lifted his arm toward the membranes, and flexed his fingers wide.

Felicity kept her gun and her eyes firmly pointed at the man. Unfortunately, that meant that she got a good look at his backside. It was hairless, but then, so was the rest of him. Or at least, the parts that she could see. There was no hair on his scalp, but there
was
a set of curious bony ridges ringing his head. His skin was paper white and shone like glazed porcelain. As she peered closer, she saw that he was actually covered in tiny, perfect, polished scales. He was tall and slim.

The man finished and took his foot off the pedal of the rubbish bin, sending the lid down with a clang. To Felicity’s consternation, he then turned around. He didn’t look over his shoulder, and he didn’t cover himself up. Despite herself, she looked at his penis.

Okay, that’s... unorthodox.

Instead of any form of genitalia with which Felicity was acquainted, the white man’s groin sported a smooth skin of those tiny white scales that shivered and locked together seamlessly before her eyes.

The rest of him was similarly nonstandard. Like the back of him, the front of him did not have any hair. His skin glistened white in the light, and he was fairly muscular-looking. A ridge of scales rimmed his face, which looked normal and smooth apart from its pallor. Felicity guessed him to be in his late twenties.

The most eye-catching thing about him (apart from the weird nodules on his head, the odd quality of his skin, and his lack of such traditional accoutrements as clothing and genitals) was the large crimson splash of blood on his torso. There was also blood on his arms, from the middle of his forearms up to his elbows.

“Kneel,”
said Odgers. “Hands on head.”

“Of course,” he said as he knelt down smoothly. “I expect you are from the Checquy?” he asked, his accent seeming to skitter around the globe, as if he’d lifted pronunciations from multiple different languages.

He knows about the Checquy!

“We’re from the government,” said Odgers firmly, and the man smiled. He was not at all perturbed by the guns pointed at him. “Where is Melinda Goldstein?”

“Through there,” said the man, jerking his head to the far side of the room, where the membrane hung down.

“Is she alive?”

“Ish.”

Alive-ish,
thought Felicity.
Jesus
.

“Fine,” said Odgers grimly. “Now lie down with your face on the ground.” The man nodded and cleared his throat.

“Skreeoh,”
he said.

“I beg your —” began Odgers, and then the music stopped and a horrendous shrieking sound began to rip forth all around them. It hammered through their heads. Automatically, Felicity began to hunch down, but —

“Keep him covered!” shouted Odgers.

“We’re clear!” shouted Jennings. “It’s coming from the walls!” Felicity saw the man tense his face, and then the floor beneath his feet and the ceiling directly above his head darkened, and the light was swiftly extinguished throughout the entire chamber. She caught a glimpse of him beginning to move just before the place was completely shrouded in darkness.

“He’s bolting!” she shouted.

“Shoot him!” barked Odgers, and the two women opened fire at the corner the Homeowner had been kneeling in. The rest of them held their positions as the muzzle flashes lit up the room for a moment. The screaming noise of the walls mercifully cut off with a tortured squeal, leaving everyone’s ears ringing.

The strobing of the gunfire left afterimages glowing in Felicity’s eyes against the darkness, and she hurriedly slapped her visor down over her face.

The room had apparently not taken well to getting peppered with bullets; the screaming had ceased, but a cloud of acrid black smoke was swirling through the space, along with the smell of burned hamburgers. Felicity could just make out that the corner of the chamber had been somewhat shredded, and the thick walls were oozing a viscous liquid. The rubbish bin of urine had been knocked over, with vile results. There was not, however, any sign of a white naked man or a white naked corpse. There weren’t even any white naked fragments.

“I don’t see him!” she shouted. “Scan the room!” She peered around, gun raised, and saw that the others had flipped down their visors too. The valve-door had closed itself tightly; not even a trace of the seams remained.

Then Felicity saw that Pawn Odgers was lying on the ground, her throat cut.

“Oh no,” she breathed.

“Clements, Chopra, flank me!” ordered Jennings. His tone cut through her horror, and she nodded obediently. The two of them moved to either side of the Pawn, trying to cover every direction the enemy might come from.

“No radio contact with the team,” said Chopra grimly. “The door is shut.”

“No sign of the target?” Felicity asked.

“Maybe he escaped out the door?” wondered Chopra. “And then shut it behind him?” They looked around, peering through the smoke, and saw no trace of their quarry. The chamber was silent, apart from the dripping of the wounds in the wall.

“Or he went into the other part of the room,” suggested Felicity quietly. “That bit behind those membranes, where he said the civilian was.”

“We’ll take it,” said Jennings. “Burst through and secure the area. Standard trident assault pattern. If that sneaky fuck’s there, we kill him. Don’t hold back. Ready on three?” They nodded.

“One.”

Felicity’s hands tightened on her gun.

“Two.”

She took a deep breath.

“Thr —”

There was a swirling in the smoke, and the unexpected figure of Pawn Cheng manifested just in front of Felicity.

“God, Andrea! Don’t
do
that!” Felicity gasped.
That must have been what Odgers was muttering before,
she thought.
Ordering Cheng to accompany us.
“I almost shot you.” Pawn Cheng, who had opened her mouth to say something, paused and gave her an incredulously pitying look. Then she shook her head and got straight to the point.

“He’s on the ceiling!” the Asian Pawn shouted before evaporating away. As one, all of them looked up and saw the man crouched above them. Then Felicity’s visor flared blindingly as a horrendous torrent of green flames surged up out of Pawn Jennings’s open hands. The fire roared as it engulfed the ceiling, and the entire cube squealed and shuddered.

Felicity ducked down automatically, away from the flames, and tore her helmet off. The heat was tremendous, and sweat was bursting out of her skin. She squinted and saw that Jennings had both his arms raised and his head thrown back. A deluge of emerald fire flowed out of his skin, even gushing up from his face and neck to spread across the ceiling. Felicity tried to shield her eyes from the glare. Beyond him, Chopra was also crouching away from the inferno.

“Jennings, stop!” screamed Felicity. “Or we’ll all be killed!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said a voice in her ear. She jerked away and saw the naked man was now crouching by her. He scuttled forward, moving swiftly even though he was bent double. She caught a flash of a white blade in his hands, and then he was standing behind Jennings. He swung and in one movement sliced through both the Pawn’s forearms.

Jennings’s hands, and a good portion of his lower arms, spiraled away, green fire still spurting from them in little bursts. Felicity squeaked as sparks hissed in her sweaty hair, and then she fell back on her bottom when one of the hands landed right in front of her. The fingers clenched spasmodically, and small flames danced for a moment on the fingertips before dying away.

The conflagration on the ceiling did not die, but it was no longer being fed by the Pawn’s will. The deafening roar faded, and there was only the sound of cracklings and Jennings’s labored, gulping breaths. Felicity looked up, dreading what she might see. Her comrade was staring, wide-eyed, at his newly curtailed limbs.

Then he began to scream, and blood sprayed out of his wounds and across the room, igniting in the air into liquid green fire. She flung up her arms to protect her face and felt burning drops patter across her armor. When she brought her arms down, she saw that flames were pouring out of Jennings’s forearms and flowing onto the floor. They were spreading out swiftly, like pools of water. Felicity and Chopra hastily scrabbled backward, away from each other. The naked man vaulted back too, up and onto one of the metal benches, and leaned against the wall. The flames were reflected in his strange, glazed-porcelain skin.

“That really ought to have worked,” said the man to himself, looking a little crestfallen.

“What are you?” Felicity spat. He didn’t even bother to look at her, just surveyed the scene with a mildly displeased expression. The flames did not seem to be exhausting themselves; they were climbing higher and spreading across the floor. The place had become an inferno. She looked around wildly for some way out.