Heart of the Storm, page 7
“Should probably keep our voices down,” Lethe said, in English, but meta-low, where no one but our own kind could hear us. She looked like a middle-aged Chinese woman with dark hair bound back, an off-white turtleneck style shirt beneath a tan blazer. Very stylish, I thought.
“Should probably not talk at all if we can avoid it,” I said. Ahead, the parking lot came to an end with a line of slightly ramshackle buildings. The cars were an interesting mix; Tesla, Nissan, and Volkswagen logos and models I recognized were mingled with Chinese brands I didn't. “Anyone who's a meta here is of overwhelming likelihood also a very loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Silence is golden,” Jian said, and then added something in Mandarin that I didn't get. This was not going to be easy.
The street was not quite what I would have expected from a mid-sized Chinese town. It was busy, and humming, in the way that you'd find in New York, in spite of it being more the size of Cleveland or Cincinnati.
We weren't walking long, or at a very fast clip, when Wade took the expected turn onto another street. I jumped into Ricardo's head for a moment, taking up Hades's arm as though guiding an old man. He took my real meaning, though, which was to let him steer me while I reconned the area psychically, through my falcon. Talk about things I never thought I'd be able to say, let alone do.
The neighborhood ahead was built like a lake of buildings surrounding a winding peninsula of an alley. A couple cars were parked within, and roof awnings stretched over to mostly hide it from the sky. A couple of restaurants, some sort of offices, and a clothing store all made this strange, circular strip mall its home. The electronic store that was our target was sandwiched innocuously in the middle of it all. I took Ricardo on a low flyby, and he caught a glimpse of a man in his late twenties sitting at the counter within, looking down at his phone.
Perfect.
“There are exterior cameras,” I said quietly, “and cameras inside.”
Jian answered, his voice slightly elevated with the first notes of concern, verging lightly upon panic. “How are we going to deal with those?”
“Sierra,” I said, “is there way for me to interrupt power to the camera system without bringing it down for the whole building?”
There was a pause, and for one uncomfortable second I wondered if I was already somehow cut off from my AI. “The camera system appears to be an independent, hard-wired system that operates separately from the building's main power, likely as a security precaution to keep it running even if Anshun's power fails. Delivering an electrical jolt to the system at the wattages you produce will likely cause the system to reboot and allow you a window of approximately three to five minutes during which the cameras will be offline.”
“Okay,” Jian said as we rounded the corner. Ahead, I could see the electronics shop entry. “How do we deal with the staff?”
“That's easy,” I said. “Four of us are soul-suckers. All we need to do is drag the memories out of them, leave 'em in a haze. I count one guy behind the desk.”
“If I come at him, and this is a PLA installation,” Wade said, “he's likely to react in some way. Trained soldier, y'know?”
“Saunter in,” I said. “Play it cool. Lull him, and ease your way up to the counter while I deal with the cameras.”
“If you aren't careful, you will be seen on camera,” Sierra said, “from the spark coming out of your hand. The on-site backup will capture it, even if the camera goes off-line immediately after.”
“Don't walk up to the camera and blast it,” I said. “Understood. Is there a different place I could give it a love zap?”
“Scanning. When I identify a suitable spot,” Sierra said, “I will let you know.”
“Copy that,” I said, dropping to meta-low as a middle-aged Asian man passed me. He looked a touch different than Han Chinese, and I wondered if he was part of the ethnic minority that made up the population of Anshun.
“Heading in,” Wade said, about ten feet away from the front door, and twenty ahead of me. We'd spread out, so as not to look like a tightly-clumped group.
“I will loiter outside, my dear,” Hades said, detaching his arm from mine and giving me a pat as we parted. He shuffled to a nearby bus stop bench and sat down, still exhibiting that old Asian man style of walk. It was eerie to behold.
“I'll wait, too,” Lethe said. “Give me a whistle if you need a hand, I'll be there in three shakes.” She detached from us and put her back against the wall outside the clothing store, paying an excessive amount of attention to her phone, as though composing a very important text.
“Okay,” I said, not even glancing at the camera overhead as I followed Wade to the shop's door. He opened it for me, the little bell ringing, and I took a deep breath before I went in.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Chinese man behind the counter looked up as we entered. He was young, raven-haired, with a cleft in his chin, attentive eyes scanning us both as we came in.
“Nihao,” Wade said in Mandarin. Some of the only Mandarin I knew.
The man behind the counter just grunted. A rattling of beads in an archway behind him revealed a second man, much bigger than the first, and with much less of a customer service face. But it wasn't a resting bitch face; no, it was active bitch face. He scowled at Wade, scowled at me, and let the beads fall down over his shoulder.
The first guy behind the counter barked out a sharp series of words in Mandarin that I did not understand, but that started to flood across my display. I didn't really need the translation to pick up the gist, though: “What the hell do you want?”
Wade answered back as I drifted sideways, toward a display of phones that were – to put it mildly – absolute crapola. They looked like shit that had been sold in America back in the days when I first came out of my house, the waning days of flip phones. I had a strong feeling that they weren't high tech in China, either, which probably kept traffic to this place low.
My husband's reply printed out for me: “Can't a man just be looking for ancient electronics without getting pissed at?”
I blinked reading the words. Either something had gotten lost in translation or my hubby wasn't a fluent speaker.
“What did you say?” The second guy – El Gordo, let's call him, because boy was he big for a Chinese fellow – stepped up to the counter and loomed over Wade. Wade was not a short guy, so this took some doing. Well, some natural talent, anyway.
Wade bit off another burst of Mandarin, but a bit slower this time. The words appeared on my visor screen a moment later. “I said that I am looking for electronics. Why do you microwave me?”
Shit.
“Some good news,” Sierra said softly, directly into my earwig, “there is a conduit three feet to your left that powers the security cameras. Directing voltage into it should knock out the camera system without taking out power to the whole building.”
“Three cheers for good news,” I muttered, meta-low, which caused El Gordo to look at me, his brow knitted in a look of clear, but dark, suspicion. Reaching out, I sent a surreptitious burst of electricity into the suggested spot, and heard a faint hum die.
“Warning,” Sierra intoned, telling everyone else what I'd just noticed, “at least one of the subjects in the store is metahuman. The shorter one, for reference.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” the big guy was shouting at Wade. The raised voice was concerning, and prompted sounds of movement in the back room. Which meant we were not going to be alone with these two for much longer. “Can't you speak?”
“Another warning – an unknown number of reinforcements are making their way out from the back of the store,” Sierra said. “I estimate two more players are waiting in the wings.”
“Lovely,” I said, under my breath, meta-low. The guy behind the counter practically had an exclamation point over his head now, and broke off from looking at Wade to head in my direction, weaving out from behind the counter, locked on me. He barked something in Mandarin at me, and my translation vision took what felt like an eternity to produce: “What did you say? I hear you muttering. Don't be shy, say it loud, share with the class.”
“There is likely some sort of alarm in easy reach,” Sierra said quietly in my ear. Presumably she was broadcasting this to the rest of the team as well. “If this situation continues to deteriorate, you must ensure they do not activate it.”
“Well, that's something new for us,” Hades said over the open line. “I have a clear line of sight on the man behind the counter, Wade. You can leave him to me.”
“We cannot leave this place full of corpses,” Lethe said. “It's as good as sending up a flare.”
“Hm?” I said. El Gordo was almost to me, and he'd slowed his approach because I had raised my hands in the universal sign of, “I don't know what you're talking about.” I was trying to be non-confrontational. I was trying to be cool. I was trying to be calm.
But everything was falling apart.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
This was not going well.
Wade was being questioned by the cleft-chinned guy behind the counter, the suspicion putting his eyes into a deep squint. He looked like he was about two seconds from leaping the counter to get up in Wade's face, which was not going to do us much good.
At least two more enemies were waiting behind the curtains of beads, in the dark passageway behind the counter leading to whatever back room this place had. Presumably in there, somewhere, was the data console we were here to insert Sierra into. Behind however many Chinese plainclothes soldiers were waiting.
And then there was the guy coming toward me. Big, scowling, his eyes locked on me, an extremely disgruntled look on his face. I knew a thing or two about being disgruntled. About causing it. About being it. “I heard you talking under your breath,” he said, continuing his steady progress toward me. “What was it you were saying? I'll have it out of you now, or else you'll taste the back of my hand.”
I was keeping cool. I had my hands up. I couldn't speak Mandarin, certainly couldn't think in Mandarin. He shouted at me, interrupting my attempt to placate him. Behind him, Wade and his interlocutor were yelling at each other. We just needed to stay cool. We just needed to keep it calm.
Then El Gordo reached out to grab me by the wrist, and my calm failed.
“Don't touch me!” I shouted in English, the volume and ferventness in my voice surprising even me. If it hadn't come from my own voice, my own throat, I would have taken a step back from the speaker, it caught me by such surprise.
I lashed out before he landed a hand on my wrist, breaking through his nascent grip and popping him in the nose. It burst like a rotten strawberry and blood spattered in all directions. I followed with a short punch to his gut and he went from his head snapping back to his entire body bending double in a hot second.
Using his momentum against him, I launched up three feet and raised my knee, greeting his face and jaw with it. His eyes rolled back in his head, and I knew he was out, if not on his way to death.
And death...well, I was death.
I didn't have time to waste, though, on petty things like exulting in the fall of one guy when there were at least two more in the back room waiting. I was still hanging in the air after kneeing El Gordo in the face, and I propelled myself forward in flight toward the curtain of beads. Raising my hands in front of me, I launched through them with a rattle that tore half of them off, and slammed into a stack of dudes who had been waiting just behind them, about to enter the storefront.
And I scattered those pigs like a bowling ball against tenpins.
They slammed, each into the next, and we rammed into the far wall at the back of the room. I was punching the whole time, slamming my fist into anywhere I could hit, and by the time we hit the wall, the first guy in the stack was unconscious, bordering on brain-damaged. I grabbed him by the shirt, threw him to the side, and started working the next dude in line, who was badly disoriented. By my count, he was number two of four in the stack, and the guys behind him were in a full-blown panic, wriggling and trying to get out from under the crush of me pressing them, with my flight powers, against the wall.
“I'll kill you all!” I bellowed, ramming my elbows into the second guy's head. His eyes fluttered, his head lolled, and I pulled back long enough to throw him out of the way, through a card table in the center of the room before I slammed forward again, into numbers three and four, with enough force that number three's ribs cracked upon impact and all the wind went out of him. As if that weren't bad enough, I lifted a knee as hard as I could and heard one of his testicles pop. He would have exhaled mightily – if I hadn't already stolen all his breath.
He sagged, and I elbowed him so hard in the head that he hit the concrete floor off to the side, leaving me face to face with the last man standing. He was staring at me, wide-eyed and panicked.
I seized him by the throat, lifting him six inches off the ground, and rammed him into the concrete wall. It felt like the whole building shook.
“You pieces of shit,” I said, pummeling him in the belly, with enough force to knock more air out of him, just jabbing him repeatedly in the solar plexus, “you sycophants to a tyrant.” I lifted my hand and slapped him in the face, drawing blood and causing his eyes to roll back. “You handmaiden to a murderer.”
He didn't answer. I wasn't choking him, but he was out on his feet. Or out in a chokehold, anyway. His legs dangled beneath him, lifeless, and I had him pressed so tight against the concrete block wall that I felt his rib cage and clavicle strain from how I had him held.
“Sienna?” Wade called out from behind me.
But I ignored him, because the burning had started in my palm, and I felt myself drifting forward into the man's mind.
He was a truly filthy piece of trash. His name was Pan Xiaoming, he was 32 years old, and he was from Guiyang. He'd joined the Peoples' Republican Army right out of the Chinese equivalent of high school, and his first assignment after basic training had been as a prison guard in Xinjiang, where they kept the Uigher Muslims.
I'd heard the stories of rape, of prison guards doing whatever they wanted to a helpless, captive population that included women and children who'd committed no crime save for being genetically related to a disfavored minority, but as I slipped into Pan's memories, I realized firsthand that everything I'd heard about the prison experience – the rape, the murder, the cruelty – was not only horribly, horrifically true, but that I held in my hand one of the foot soldiers of its execution.
My skin burned against his, and his soul screamed in his unconscious body at the pain I was inflicting.
He was a metahuman, chosen to receive the serum after his loyal service to the Chinese Communist Party. And it had unlocked within him–
Oh. Nifty. A Hercules. I didn't have a full one of those.
“Sienna, what are you doing?” Lethe's voice was suddenly in my ear, her hand on my wrist, trying to unlock it.
“Learning Mandarin,” I said in a dead, harsh, guttural, otherworldly tone. “And picking up a new power that's sure to come in useful whenever I want to open a pickle jar.”
“Yeah, I'm sure you really struggled with that before,” Wade said from somewhere behind me.
I felt the rush as I tore at his soul. My skin burned in the best possible way, a tingling starting at my palm and working its way through me.
“We can't leave dead bodies here, Sienna,” Hades said, trying to break my joy.
“Don't worry, it'll just be the one, and I'll make sure he's turned to ash,” I said, my eyes closed. “Trust me – he's earned it.”
I felt Lethe's hand go slack on my arm.
Good. I didn't need to be talked out of this. I didn't want to be talked out this.
I ripped the last vestiges of his soul out of his body, and he barely shuddered as I did so. I realized at the last that I'd accidentally broken his neck on the first slam; all the more reason for him to disappear.
Coming out of the trance-like state that consumed me whenever I took a soul, I stared at a slack face, dead eyes, staring back at me...
And I let him drop, like the dead chunk of meat he was, to the concrete floor. He made a thud like he was a sack of rice. His eyes stared up at the ceiling, his jaw was slack. He'd evacuated his bowels and pissed his pants, one of those fun little details most people don't think about when they go to kill someone.
“Get to work scourging the memories out of these guys' heads,” I barked, and turned to Jian, Wade, and Lethe behind me. Hades was probably hanging out on the sidewalk, making sure someone didn't walk in on us. I checked with Ricardo quickly and carefully; he was still overhead, and there were no sirens coming, no cars screeching up outside.
“Okay,” Wade said, though in the way he said it I sensed more, much more, waiting below the surface of his words. He knelt down over one of the soldiers I'd discarded. “We need a reason for them to be experiencing pain and collective memory loss.”
“Have Jian tell them they were in a bar fight last night,” I said, because I didn't want to argue. “But first – Jian, the computer you need is over there,” and I pointed to the corner. “It'll give you access.” I tossed him a connective wire to plug a phone into it. “Follow Sierra's instructions and get her downloading, will you?”
“Yes,” Jian said. He headed for the computer, clearly in no mood to argue with the crazy lady who'd just murdered one of the Chinese guards.
“You two, work quick,” I said, waving at Wade and Lethe. He was already hunched over, fingers plastered to one of the guards' faces, removing memories. “We need to be on our way in ten minutes or less.”
“Sure,” Lethe said. I sensed she was not sure.
But I didn't care. I knew the layout of this place now, and I knew that the back door opened to that near-private alley I'd seen overhead, that these guys took smoke breaks out there and rarely saw another soul. I threw the door open and dragged the corpse I'd made out under the cover of the awnings above, then I shut the door to the shop behind me.
