Under A Winter Sun

Die Fast

Die FastI know it's a trap.

But they knew I would show up. If there's even a remote chance another one of those fuckers is still hiding out there, it's worth checking out. And that someone knows I hunt them intrigues me.

A woman in a hooded cloak sits dead centre in the dark, empty warehouse. She's slumped on a polymer chair, arms behind her back. The scene is illuminated by a solitary light bulb suspended on a frayed cord that disappears into the dusty gloom high above. Like the lure of a giant anglerfish. Dust motes swirl lazily like fireflies in the light. Someone disturbed the air not too long ago. This whole setup is wrong.

I slip out into the echoing space with the pistol held before me. Like everything down here in the Bottoms, the warehouse smells of old dust and engine oil. The smells of my childhood. My eyes and ears strain to pick up any hint of danger, but even my unnaturally sharp senses have to admit defeat. If there's someone out there in the shadows, they are not moving. I glance around as I inch forward, trying to make out anything in the darkness, but the contrast from the light is too strong. They staged this perfectly.

The girl hasn't moved a finger since I entered the room. Is she even breathing? I don't think they've killed her, but I can't be certain. She's likely an unsuspecting girl from the street, lured with drugs or money and left here for me as human bait.

There's a faint scrape of hardened rubber on concrete somewhere to my right and a spring baton comes twirling out of the darkness and knocks the gun from my hands.

“You've got company.”

“I am aware.”

“There are five of them.”

I drop into a fighter's stance an instant before the men charge from all sides. They materialise like ghosts as they step into the dusty light. Two in front of me, one on each side and one man behind, hoping to outflank me. Not going to happen.

They are sizeable men, and they move with the cocky assurance of experienced fighters. These men have killed before, and they are certain they will do so again tonight. Not if I have anything to say about that. I drop the first one with a quick jab to the throat. His shocked grunt can't get past his crushed larynx. It's a slow and horrible death, choking on yourself. Sorry about that. Before he falls, I kick low to the right. My heavy boot finds an unprotected knee with a satisfying crunch. The leg bends the wrong way and man number two crashes to the floor. He grabs his ruined knee and screams.

By now the other three are on me. A powerful arm locks around my neck from behind and musky breath moistens my ear as if from a rough lover. The calm, even breathing and lack of alcohol on his breath tell me these guys are professionals. I'm flattered. Someone has done his homework. I stab two fingers into his right eye, hook my thumb under his thick jaw and dig into his socket with my augmented strength. His terrified scream cuts short as his cheek snaps, and he goes limp. I roll his lifeless body over my shoulder and it slumps into a mess of arms and legs on the floor. The two remaining men back away and circle me, just out of range. The screams of the man with the broken knee echo around the empty warehouse.

They haven't said a word so far. Another sure sign of professionals. There's no reason to talk to your assignment.

I have learned two things. They know who I am, and they want me alive. If they worked for the people I first thought they did, they wouldn't waste time on this martial arts crap. They'd just kill me. They know me too well to give me a sporting chance like this. No, this must be something else.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” I call out into the darkness over my shoulder while keeping a careful eye on my circling opponents.

No reply. I figured as much.

The two men reach their positions on my flanks and get ready to strike. The girl on the chair has raised her head and looks at us. She could be watching a dull cage fight for all the interest she displays. They must have drugged her.

As on a signal, the men rush me. I go for the man on the right. He's the uglier of the two.

I twist and put a foot out to trip him, then grab his outstretched arm and pull him off balance and use his momentum to throw him into the man coming from the other direction. The horrible sound of two thick skulls cracking against each other echoes around the hangar. They both drop without so much as a whimper.

It's all over in less than ten seconds. Two men dead, one with a broken leg and two possible broken necks. Not a bad score for an old man.

I walk up to the girl on the chair and kneel at her side, searching for the ropes. “I'm gonna get you out of here. We need to go before more of them show up.” This is far too easy.

“Is that so?”

I know that voice.

I look up. It's her. The woman from the Lady of Heaven. The one who slipped me the note. I should have known.

That's when I realise the guy with the broken knee has fallen silent.

I can't find any ropes.

“Behind you, Perez.”

Too late I register the slick metallic sound of a gun c*****g behind me and I know I'm done for. I close my eyes. Mostly from the shame of being outsmarted. Even I can't dodge a bullet to the brain from point-blank range.

The shot rings out and I wait for my skull to explode.

It doesn't. Not that I would have had time to savour the experience, but still. There's a heavy, meaty thud as if a body drops behind me.

“You're fine, Perez.”

“Was that a compliment?”

“f**k you.”

“f*****g amateurs.” There's a smoking gun in the woman's hand.

One of those guns. The ones that kill people like yours truly. Was that gun meant for me?

What the hell is going on here?

I get up and take a few careful steps back. “Why the theatrics? You could have just asked me if you wanted a date.”

She doesn't reply. Instead, she gets up from the chair and casually tosses the gun away. It clatters away into the darkness. It's a one-shot weapon, and she knows that. I've only seen a gun like that once before, and that was years ago. A brief memory flashes across the silver screen of my mind. A memory of spiky red hair and a promise.

The woman stretches her arms and lets the hooded cloak drop to the floor. Underneath, she wears a heavy military issue charcoal-grey jumpsuit. The chest, shoulders, knees, and elbows are armoured with angled hypercarbon plating. There's a large dust-coloured scarf around her neck. Special ops gear. Her black hair is tied back in a ponytail and a straight-cut fringe hangs down to her eyebrows. Her skin is paler than the universal norm, but she's got the deep tan of someone with an outdoor job. She means serious business.

She moves in, deliberately closing the gap between us.

“They were right, you know.”

She stares me hard in the eye. She's got beautiful brown eyes. The colour of oak-aged whisky. “You are good.”

Her face is now close to mine. I can smell her sweet breath and our noses almost touch.

“Thanks.”

So, she knows my name. This gets more intriguing by the minute.

Her lips are beautiful and cruel, and she smells of strawberries and fine tobacco. “Now let's see how good you really are.”

She kicks the legs out from under me and I drop like I've been axed. I twist and turn the fall into a quick shoulder-roll and I'm back on my feet a healthy distance away from her.

“All right, you've got my curiosity piqued, girl.”

I crack my neck to get the kinks out and get ready for another quick fight. “Who are you?”

We circle the edge of the pool of light, measuring each other, staying well out of each other's reach.

“I'm Soledad.”

“Nice to meet you, Soledad.” I tip an imaginary hat to her. “But I was thinking more 'who the f**k are you people'?”

“We are the ones sent to find you where others have failed.”

“What, you and those clowns?” I jab a thumb over my shoulder at the dead and dying men on the floor.

She shrugs. “They were just hired help.”

“Staff these days …”

We keep circling.

“Do you think we'd only send amateurs like them after you? Show us some respect at least.”

“You've sent amateurs after me in the past.”

“That was the past.”

“So, you work for the immortals. I always wondered when they'd bring in the cavalry.”

Her failure to react when I mention the immortals tells me I'm right.

“But if you work for them, you know who I am. You know what I am. And you must know you can't win this fight.”

“Yes, I know what you are.” She cracks her fingers. “And I know I can win this fight.”

She's not bragging. The poor girl thinks she can beat me. Oh, dear. I have no wish to ruin that face.

“I see. You wanted me for yourself.” I sneer. “I'm flattered. Is that why you shot that guy when he pulled a gun on me?”

I nod at the corpse on the floor. There's a hole in his forehead. A trail of inky spatter leads out into the shadows behind him, like the gruesome minute hand of an ancient mechanical watch.

“No. A gun was not part of the plan. That was him … improvising.” She waves a hand in the air. “Nasty things happen when people improvise.”

“You know what they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Maybe he was showing initiative? That's a valued trait for many employers.”

“He knew the plan, and he knew we don't encourage critical thinking. And you were right. I want you for myself.”

“As I said, I'm flattered.”

I am. She's lean, muscular, with an ass to die for in that tight combat suit. The fact she wears the suit zipped open to show a tight, greasy white top that leaves her toned belly bare doesn't hurt. She hasn't even broken a sweat yet. There's something special about girls who can handle themselves in a fight. I smile.

When she strikes, she moves at the speed of darkness.

What? Never heard of the speed of darkness? No matter how swift the light moves, the darkness is always there to poke it in the eye when it arrives.

I've seen no one move like this. She crosses the circle and attacks me in the single moment it takes a human being to blink. Only my augmented reflexes save me from taking a fist in the face.

She rains punches and kicks over me and it's all I can do to fend her off. The accuracy of her blows is terrifying, but what's even worse is the fury with which she delivers them. This girl wants to hurt me. Bad.

We dance around the warehouse, trading punches and kicks in and out of the pool of light.

She catches me on the nose with a lucky punch and blood spurts everywhere. She is pissing me off. “Ouch. You fight like a girl, Soledad, and normally, I don't fight girls. But for you, I might have to make an exception.” I snort and swallow a fair amount of blood mixed with snot. Whoever called unarmed combat an art, was a wanker.

I aim a kick at her knee, but she dances out of reach.

“You need to be quicker than that to beat me, old man,” she says.

She throws another fist to my face and I block it high, opening up her midsection to attack. I see my chance.

She delivers a quick knee to my balls, and I go down.

She follows up with a lightning-swift boot in my face and my vision explodes into a galaxy of pulsating stars. I fail to roll away, and she drops on top of me. She pins me to the floor by pressing my arms down my sides with her finely toned legs. She's strong. Impossibly strong. Her combat suit creaks as she squeezes her legs around me.

“f**k, that hurt.”

I try to clear my head, but everything is still blurry. Her thighs smell of dust and hi-tech fibres. To gain time to let my vision clear, I keep talking.

“Look, Soledad. We both know you will not kill me before you've told me what this crap is all about. Why not tell me your grand plan and get it over? I hear you criminal masterminds love the sound of your own voice even more than you enjoy hurting people.”

“Who said I was the criminal mastermind?”

She punches me in the face. Hard. And then again, and again. There is no way I can fight her off or get away. My head cracks against the concrete floor and something breaks in my cheek under her fist. Ouch.

Something colossal shifts deep in my mind, like a deep-sea leviathan rolling over in its sleep, close to waking up. Not now. Not yet. I need her alive to find out who is behind all this.

“Stop. Don't do this.” Don't feed the monster.

Not the best thing to say to an obvious sadist. The fervour of her attacks increases and with every punch she brings the thing inside me closer to the surface.

Punch. Closer.

Punch. Closer.

Punch.

The thing snaps free from its chains at the murky bottom of my consciousness and comes rushing to the surface. My mind does the all too familiar somersault and my body goes light like I'm floating in water. Everything slows to a crawl and I can't control my body anymore.

The Dread General is in the house.

“Unknown entity detected.”

“I know, Aeryn. Sit back and enjoy the show.” It's all we can do.

“You're not so cocky now, are you, Perez?”

The mystery woman named Soledad keeps pounding away, lost in the moment. “The great Asher Perez. Not so invincible now.”

The pain is dull and far away, but my mind remains crystal clear. Asher Perez no longer feels the pain.

Unfortunately for Soledad, she's not fighting Asher Perez anymore.

General Meridian, the World Burner, does not enjoy being hurt.

He smashes his bloodied and broken forehead into Soledad's face with enough force to throw her over. Her nose explodes into a slow-motion shower of blood as her head arcs over backwards. She sprawls on her ass and clutches her nose. Meridian gets up and launches a kick to her face. She doesn't even see it coming for all the blood, and the heavy boot impacts the side of her head. The kick caves in her temple and snaps her neck like a dry twig, and she goes down. Hard.

The fight is over.

But then the woman pushes up from the floor on shaking arms. She is not dead, even though her neck remains at an odd angle. One of her hands twitches, but she should not be able to move at all. She should be dead or paralysed from the shoulders down. Instead, she cracks her slender neck, something pops back into place, and she can move again. She leers at Meridian through the blood flowing from her nose. The blood bubbles between her ruined teeth as she breathes hard.

Soledad wiggles her fingers. “Surprise.”

It is. I was not expecting that, and neither was Meridian. She's an augmented immortal. Like me.

But that's impossible. The last of the Cherubim were killed on Persephone forty years ago. All but me.

The General doesn't burden himself with questions. The rudimentary lizard brain functionality left of his once great mind is focused on one thing, and one thing only. Keeping the General alive at any cost. Soledad is still a threat, and he won't stop until she is neutralised.

He punches her in the face, and she goes down again. She struggles to her feet. Stay down, Soledad, I want to scream. Stay down. No sound crosses my lips. Meridian sneers.

He hits her again, sending her off balance. Then he goes for her eye. Her beautiful eye. His fingers dig into her socket and tear it out. She howls and drops to her knees. Meridian moves in for the kill and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Soledad is going to die. He grabs her by the collar and pulls the monomolecular knife with his free hand. Even if she's an immortal, she can't live without her head, and the General knows that. He flips the blade open one-handed.

Now I will never learn who she was or what this was about.

Soledad glares up at Meridian with a mixture of rage and defiance in her remaining eye. The jelly from her torn eye squishes between Meridian's fingers as he raises the knife to take her head.

“f**k you, Perez,” she says with blood flowing down her face and bubbling from her once attractive lips.

As last words go, not especially original, but far from the worst I've heard. She spits blood in Meridian's face, defiant to the last. f**k, I liked her.

A short, controlled swarm of bullets explodes from Meridian's chest, tearing control of my body from him along with my internal organs. The aim is perfect, and the projectiles cut through my spinal cord right between the shoulder blades. I lose all motor functions in my lower body and I drop to the floor next to Soledad. Ice creeps into my veins as the blood leaks from the fist-sized exit wound in my chest. As I expire on the dusty concrete floor of this sorry warehouse, there's another voice in the shadows.

“Goodbye, Perez.”

“Major internal damage. Vital signs in the red. You're dying, Perez.”

“Don't worry about that.”

“Whatever.”

The newcomer steps into the light.

At first, I only see a halo of platinum-blonde hair. Then she leans in and her face comes into focus.

Except for the hair, she is the spitting image of Soledad.

“Die fast. We have a job for you.”