Soldier of Time

XXXIV: The Fighter (1)

The Deer walked through the mines in the company of Amber. Taking her through El Morro was not an easy task, but once that was over, he knew many, many deserted roads in the mines that would prevent people from getting hurt by the girl’s ability. That and calling Nasuma to explain the situation were sufficient precautions to allow the young woman to be transferred to what would now be her temporary home.

Her walk took them to the dock, where a boat would be Amber’s new home. The girl looked at the boat and said, smiling.

“I didn’t know you were a shipman.”

“I’m not,” Slevin replied, looking at the young woman. “That belongs to Nasuma.”

The girl smiled and continued walking. She could see the members of the vanguard on the balcony of her house on the top of the hill from that pier. The young woman looked at Slevin and said, “And by the way, they can take care of me from their base, right?”

“I’m not going to let absolutely nothing happen to you, Amber...” Slevin said with a smile.

She smiled once more and walked to the boat feeling the ocean air on her face. They both got on the boat, looked at the cabins and the different areas that the young woman would have, and once on deck, the girl asked, “Will you stay today?”

Slevin seeing her through the glass that provided as his mask, replied, “Maybe, first, I should do two things.”

After saying that, the Deer went up the hill to the vanguard house where Nasuma and Sabrina were waiting for him. Nasuma smoked a cigar and spoke calmly with her assistant with his eyes on the ocean.

When the Deer arrived, he said, “There was a battle in the territory of Troy. You must call Simon.”

The Deer smiled at how well informed Nasuma was and, nodding, replied, “The other subjects, the boys from the train and the Ice girl. Did you find them?”

“The Ice girl, yes,” Sabrina answered with her eyes on the Deer’s knives, but the boys from the train were not there.

The Deer nodded dismissively, and Nasuma, walking into the house, put his hand on the shoulder of his subordinate and said in a solemn voice.

“Fix this Deer.”

And with those words, he withdrew. Sabrina looked at Slevin with compassion and, putting her hand in her pocket, took out her military badges, ones that she had not used for a long time since the battle had ended and she had buried her old self in the tranquillity that the avant-garde gave her.

“You must be who you are in this battle, Slevin.”

The mercenary looked at the plates in Sabrina’s hand and felt the weight of his knives hanging, he felt so comfortable that remorse gnawed at his head, but he sighed loudly to shake it and said, “If you want peace...”

The Deer was descending slowly towards the boat with the information that Sabrina had given him on a memory card in his pocket, the young man called Simon to find out how that situation had gone.

Simon explained everything to him, and the Deer told him that he would gladly speak with Troy in the complex.

The Deer approached the boat as Amber watched the waves with great interest until she heard the Deer say.

“In here, you will be safe and comfortable while this ends.”

The girl looked up to see the Deer, who was standing on the dock, did not need a mask and said, “Sorry to cause you trouble. It’s really the last thing I want, Slevin.”

“I know, but don’t worry, this is not a problem. It is actually a solution. Frankly, I will keep myself calmer knowing that you are in the mines.”

The young woman calmly smiled as she put her hand on the bandaged leg. She knew that it would heal quickly.

That was the greatness of her ability that although it was completely harmful on the outside, inside, it had the secret for salvation and cure of many things.

A skill that caused many people to want to control it. But no one could control Amber, and she was free.

The Deer looked at the young woman with tenderness and remembered what Sabrina had told him. The setting sun warmed his face, and the Deer sighed to be able to say.

“Amber, you still have my badges...”

The girl seemed surprised and, putting her hand inside her shirt, took out a small necklace with two plates and held them in the air for him to see. The young man looked at them shining in the sunset light and said, “I will use them again...”

The young woman took the necklace and pulled out one of the plates before throwing the necklace at the Deer.

He caught it and, somewhat confused, and he saw the young woman who said, “I’ll keep one half of you, so to be complete, you will have to return...”

Slevin grinned and looked at the young woman with longing eyes and a genuine smile, he said, “You already have much more than half.”

Amber blushed, but she was smiling to say something until the Deer’s phone rang. The Deer answered the call, but agitated breathing was the only thing he could hear. On the other side of the receiver, a huge pile of chaos was being noticed. After a few seconds, the Deer heard Karen’s voice saying.

“Deer, they’re here!! He is here!”

The Deer tried to speak again, but the call was cut off. Amber looked at Slevin’s worried face, and he asked, “You got to go, right?”

“Yes, I don’t know what happens, but I have to go.”

After those words, the man started on his way. He was exhausted, but from what he heard on the call, the situation was not easy. If Hanibal was involved, he should be there.

A couple of hours earlier at the complex. Karen was chatting with Nicol about those skills that the young woman had forgotten to mention. Karen thought that the man that the Deer had sought to find Hanibal, although they could be infallible, it would never hurt to have alternative plans for that task.

“So you can hack anything, can’t you?”

The girl looked fearfully at the commanding officer and nodded delicately.

“Then you could, with those skills, access a system that allows us to find Hanibal, right?”

“Theoretically, yes, but most of those systems have emergency shutdowns when arbitrarily infiltrated, Lieutenant.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, the fact is that hacking those systems is not the problem. The problem is that breaking into those systems can cause emergency shutdowns to kick in, rendering the systems obsolete and useless for our purposes.”

“But I thought you could hack anything. Can’t you just log into the system and avoid the shutdown?”

“Maybe, I probably could, but if the system is constantly monitored, then it won’t matter if I do. Someone would manually delete the system.

“You’ve thought about that a lot, haven’t you?”

“The truth is that Simon had already asked me to do something like that, and the more I look, the more obvious it becomes that only one system could cover all the space we need, but it has manual closures, and that makes the task difficult. There would only be one way to do it.”

“And what is that way?”

But while the young women were talking at the main entrance of the complex, three people met. One was a tall girl with very long black hair.

She gave the impression of being a quiet young woman because of her dress with a long white skirt and embroidered to the ankles and a sky blue blouse that revealed her shoulders, but her eyes showed anger and evil that were about to explode.

With her was a muscular and strong man with black hair and black eyes whose muscles seemed to work with a lot of patience. The man wore a white T-shirt with military pants while chewing gum.

And the third companion was a man that Karen had seen before, a harmless-looking blond young man who smiled naturally. The three of them had reached the entrance of the complex.

It was Hanibal who asked, “Jack, can you open that door, please...?”

The man in the T-shirt approached the fence and said with a wide smile.

“It’s not a problem, boss.”

He banged on the door with his right hand causing it to fly through the air, and set off an alarm throughout the complex.

From the security hut that was near the entrance, two armed soldiers came out, the young woman advanced, and they pointed their weapons at the newcomers, but the young woman raised her hand, and in that way, the soldiers began to float in the air.

The girl smiled as her enemies continued to rise. The soldiers screamed in terror as she watched the smile on Hanibal’s face, and when the soldiers were almost twenty meters high, she drew them to the ground violently, smashing their skulls against the pavement.

“Alright, guys. Can you guys handle this?”

The two newcomers smiled as Hanibal opened a bag of chips and began to eat them. The boy smiled and said, “I will protect the rear, and you know what to do.”

Both young ones nodded as they began to walk down the road in the direction of the main buildings of the complex.