6: The Storm
It was two days since the al-Mansur treasure thing, and I was riding along dusty, baking hot roads, bouncing from town to town. I remember rolling into this one place, called Gobalik. Quaint, quiet, almost a generic small town. I say "almost" because there was a distinct "steppe pastoralist" vibe to it. Was definitely sedentary, though. I swear I could hear throat singing in the distance, but that was just my imagination. Anyway, I found what was basically the town tavern, and walked in after parking my ride out front. It was the middle of the day, so it was dead quiet, only the barkeep, a steely-eyed, middle-aged hawk, was around.
"Good afternoon," said the hawk, who looked at me. He spoke with a distinct accent, probably from someplace like the Karakum.
"Hey," I replied. Our voices bounced off the walls of the building, made of adobe-coated rebar most likely. "Quiet day, eh?" I asked as I took a seat at the bar.
"Yeah," said the hawk.
"Can I get a bottle of beer? Any beer."
"Sorry, this is a dry territory."
At first I stared at him, then I started laughing, totally amused that there was not a single drop of alcohol in this bar.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me," I said while I was letting out a chuckle.
"It's the truth, my friend," said the hawk straightforwardly. I shook my head.
"Just gimme somethin' then," I requested, shrugging my shoulders. So, the guy handed me a small ceramic cup and revealed a larger porcelain pot. He poured some hot, black liquid into the cup, and the moment that happened I could smell it. "Hot damn, coffee."
"That's right, the authentic brew from Marib."
I chuckled and nodded, delighted that some caffeine was about to rush into my system. I toasted to the barkeep and then took a sip. It was bitter, unsweet, but that's not a bad thing as it gave me the jolt I needed. Oh man, I still remember that little cup from that little bar in little Gobalik. Unfortunately, at around this time is another reason why I remember little Gobalik. The front door opened, and I looked to see who it was. A pair of mean-looking sons of bitches wearing tactical clothing and gear, with wide-brimmed hats. Oh man, that day turned sour quick. The duo walked to me with heavy footsteps, and I raised an eyebrow at them, my hand slowly going to my piece.
"You Wolf O'Donnell?" asked one of them, a snake. The other was a cat.
"Who's asking?" I replied.
"We're working for Raymond Haskell," said the snake. "He's quite the influential and wealthy man, and would be more than willing to compensate you for parting with… some recently acquired goods."
"Dunno what you're talking about," I quickly said, shaking my head. Honest to God, at first I had no clue what the fuck they were saying.
"Mr. O'Donnell, please don't make this difficult," continued the snake. "Now if you just come with us I think we can-"
"I ain't going nowhere with nobody," I unflinchingly answered, standing up. "You two should walk away now." At this moment in time, the barkeep decided to speak his piece.
"Gentlemen, I won't have my business turn into a crime scene," said the bartender. While the cat growled at the bartender, the snake was stone-faced.
"Very well," said the snake, gesturing to his partner to calm down. "Mr. O'Donnell, there's a lotta money in this for you if you come with us." He enunciated the last syllable in that sentence, the 's,' and he and his partner walked out of the bar. No doubt they were waiting for me just outside the door. Right where my bike was.
"Got a back door to this place?" I asked. The bartender nodded.
"Follow me," he said with a hand wave that signaled for me to follow him. We went through the kitchen, where I noticed a scrawny hawk, most likely his kid or something, and I was led out the back, into the punishing midday sun. "Unfortunately, I've no vehicles to lend you for your quick escape," the hawk bartender noted once we stepped into the light.
"It's okay," I replied. Then, I pressed a device on my belt, and in a few seconds, my bike rolled up beside me. "After a… a bit of a nasty situation I had a few days ago, I decided that being able to call my bike to me was a really good idea." Yessir, I got an automatic vehicle signaler. Just press the button and your vehicle comes to you, whether it's a bike, or a car, or a tank. The pathfinding back then was a bit finicky but I could live with it.
"Heh, impressive," the bartender commented. Suddenly, we both heard running, and from the corner came those two fuckboys.
"Hey, stop!" said the snake. I hopped onto my bike, revved the engine, and sped off, hearing their cussing quickly diminish to nothingness. As I rounded the corner back onto the street, I noticed an SUV parked right in front of the bar, undoubtedly those guys' ride. It was the same fucking ride that carried the goons that tried to shoot down Minoru Lynx in Low Rock.
"Oh you gotta be fucking kidding me!" I yelled to myself as I rode hard and fast away from Gobalik. By the time I left the town proper, I realized that those goons were following me in the SUV. In the big nothing between towns, the wild empty desert, there was a running shootout. The cat guy, leaning out the window of the SUV, kept taking shots at my bike, trying to force me off the road or kill me or both. Meanwhile, I did my best to fire back, but it's pretty damn hard shooting behind you while riding on a bike. Fucking insane though since the cat had this full-auto blaster pistol he kept spraying me with. My personal shields were holding, but not by much, and my bike's shields were on their last legs too. I kept firing back, but my blaster bolts were doing fuck all to the SUV's shields, which absorbed them like a sponge.
"Fuck me!" I cried out, running out on the mag in my Universal, so I stuffed it back in my holster. Thinking fast as I watched the cat reload, I remembered I still had a single grenade left from my confrontation with Olivia Bronstein all those weeks ago. I pressed the button on it and counted down. Five, four, three, two… then I chucked the thing. Boom! Swear to God, it was the most satisfying boom I heard in a long-ass time. The grenade rolled underneath the SUV, right under the trunk of the car, and the explosion flipped the fucking thing over! Literally, straight outta an action movie the blast tossed the SUV like a toy car, I swear. The thud from the roof of the car slamming onto the pavement was something to behold. I laughed like a maniac as I sped off down the road.
Thought I was in the clear. Well, I thought wrong. Maybe a minute or two passed before I heard the whirring rotary blades of a helicopter. Yep, of course this cunt had a helicopter. Oh man, I'd never outrun them now, especially since they had some guy with a laser canon welded to the side doors shooting at me all the time. My heart feeling like it was about to burst out of my chest, all I could do was keep speeding down the road on my bike, hoping for fucking something to happen. I tried taking shots at the chopper, but it didn't do jack shit, and ain't no way I'm gonna pull over and take the time to bring out heavy guns from by pack, all the while being the perfectly still target I was. Then, in the distance in front of me, I saw more cars approaching, what I assumed to be more of Haskell's goons.
"Stop the motorcycle!" a voice yelled out to me. It came from the chopper, amplified over a loudspeaker. "Don't make this more difficult than it already is, O'Donnell!"
Fuck, I thought to myself. What do I do now? Couldn't do much else, other than just eat my blaster, but that wasn't an option, never is in fact. I looked to my right, though, and saw two beautiful sights. Sight one: a town. A whole goddamn town, and a turn on the road leading to it. Sight two: a sandstorm coming in from the east. Ooh yes. Cover, and more cover. Definitely could lose them in both, so I turned. The chopper and small convoy of vehicles kept following me. Decided to conserve ammo, so I didn't take shots at them anymore. They certainly did take shots of me. As I rode into the town, I quickly noticed that it was an abandoned one: didn't see a soul in sight for miles, save for the ones trying to take me out. Passed by the sign, said the town was called Moynaq.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I exasperatedly repeated to myself. My heart was throbbing right up in my windpipe as I rode into the dusty, deserted settlement. Reasonably-sized, probably had about ten thousand or so people when they all packed up and left. As the storm rolled into the place, I parked my bike on the curb of what looked like the main street. Then, I hightailed it into a moderately-sized apartment block. There were a few other big buildings up and down the street, and the chopper bailed outta the scene to avoid the storm, so Haskell's thugs would have a pretty tough time trying to look for me in the maze of ruins, not to mention the sandstorm that plunged visibility levels to almost nothing.
I dashed into the apartment building, rushing up the staircase. Coughed a lot due to swallowing a fistful of sand, and did my best to cover up my mouth with a bandana. Took deep, hard, frequent breaths as I ran up the stairs to the top floor, the fifth one. Went into an apartment with the windows still intact, and closed the door behind me, locking it. The sandstorm turned noon into midnight, and I shuffled into the bedroom of the place keeping low and crouched, eventually propping myself in the corner to wait out the storm and avoid getting noticed by the guys trying to get at me.
"Hopefully the storm will keep 'em away…" I pondered to myself.
As the minutes passed into hours, I couldn't hear much aside from the roaring wind and the grains of sand tapping against the dusty glass. Kept the Universal Paul gave me out of its holster and at the ready, safety off. Thought that these guys were crazy if they had the notion that they could get rich off of me, considering the fact that there were other guys in Imperial Valley on that day, the day I realized that all the shit we did was for nothing, and the only thing left now was a bomb crater the size of a football field. Didn't feel like sleeping. That Marib coffee did the trick, and I was way too anxious for shuteye, so my mind raced. Raymond Haskell. Never heard of him before today, but he must have deep pockets for sending what was basically a small army against little old me. Since there were others he could've nabbed for info on the treasure, I was assuming he went after me first, since I was basically low-hanging fruit. A simple merc, a lone shootist, easy pickings. Well, I wouldn't make myself easy, Haskell could count on that.
Why did he want the al-Mansur treasure so badly though? I mean, there's a lotta ways to make easy money. I didn't know what to think one bit, couldn't even speculate 'cause there were so many possibilities. He was greedy, he pissed off the wrong person more powerful than him and now he's gotta pay up, it's for bragging rights, this, that, and the other. The possibilities were endless, and it was certainly a lot to even try to think about. So, my mind wandered off to somewhere else. Namely, what this town was like, before everyone bailed on it. Why'd they bail on it anyway? Pollution? Some money-maker dried up for the town? A buncha thugs or the government, or both, "persuaded" everyone to leave?
I started getting antsy, just waiting. Was I waiting to die in a dusty old apartment in a sad little town on a hick planet? No. No I goddamn wasn't. I was gonna live, and I was gonna start living by fighting my way out. I was on my own, but that hasn't stopped me before. Went out the room, downstairs, and headed outside. Storm was still going strong, so I wrapped my bandana around my snout to keep me from inhaling sand. My sunglasses did okay, but they're no goggles. I lived with it, though. As the wind and dust whipped at me, I snuck down the street, keeping my eye out on any of those goons. As I rounded the corner though… oops. Bumped into two of those losers. Luckily I was quicker than them, and blew those fools away with my Universal. Of course though, that means I gave away my position. Double oops. Hopefully the storm muffled the shots, but probably – no, definitely – didn't. Decided to bail from this joint, so I called up my bike. But the day decided to fuck me in the ass once again, since the locating tech was getting finicky in the storm: too finicky to get my bike to me before it slammed into a goddamn streetlight fifty feet away from me.
"You have got to be shitting me," I muttered to myself. Over the howling wind, I heard yelling. So, I ran to my bike, but instead was greeted by blaster bolts shot at me from a short distance right in front of me. I thought, if I didn't find cover quick I was screwed. I fired back wildly at the general direction of where the shots were coming from, ducking behind an abandoned car. Looking left and right, figures shrouded in masks and tactical gear appeared, and I started blasting at them. I dashed from car to abandoned car, avoiding fire all the while. It was difficult figuring out where each guy was thanks to the storm, but I managed to take a few down. The bike was still lying next to the downed streetlight, but it was across the street, with some goons between me and it. No way I'd get to it safely, I have to fight 'em off.
Had one more grenade, so I used it on a group of thugs gathered behind a car, taking potshots at me while I readied the thing to chuck at them. After waiting a few seconds, I threw it, the explosive bouncing off the rusty hood of the car. Luckily it didn't get blown too far off course to make a difference. They all shouted in a panic and scrambled, but it was too late: the 'nade blew up, killing 'em all. I laughed in victory as I made a mad dash for my bike, which was laying on its side, gathering sand. Didn't even bother to check my sides, which made me a fucking idiot, because last thing I remember was something hitting me on my left side, knocking me clean out.
It was like I blinked, and in one moment I was in the middle of the street, and literally the next moment I was in a dark room, one lamp illuminating me. I had no shirt on, but my pants stayed on my legs, so that was a win I guess. My head was killing me, and I felt stiffer than a pole. Realized quick that I got hit by a stun blast, knocked me out like a tranquilizer, but without the nastiness of less-than-lethal weapons.
"Oh, shit…" I slurred. I quickly realized I was tied to a chair, and was not going anywhere anytime soon.
"Ah, good, you're awake," a voice said from behind the light, which meant I couldn't see him. He stepped into the light. Dressed pretty formally, but was sweating and seemed overall to be in a messy state: black button-up shirt with the top button undone and sleeves rolled up, black pants with dust and sand all over them, worn wingtip shoes, big-frame glasses. He seemed like he hated every second of being on this planet, and as of this moment, I couldn't blame him. He was a bull terrier, middle-aged, weary-looking. Calm, though. "My name is Raymond Haskell. Now, if you don't mind, I have a few questions for you."
I said nothing, just staring at him as the sweat dripped off my brow, the singular light from the lamp brightly shining on me from over Haskell's shoulder. I saw another figure near what looked like a door, judging by the light leaking from the little crack on the bottom. This guy seemed to be dressed in tactical gear so I guess he was a guard or something.
"You were in Imperial Valley two days ago, right?"
Not a peep from me.
"Come on, O'Donnell, I know you were there. I know you found something. And I know about the explosion. Everyone in the system knows about it, actually. It's not like a nuclear blast can just go unnoticed, now can it?"
Didn't say a word.
"O'Donnell, this is going to be much faster and much less painful for you if you cooperate, but like it or not, one way or another, I'm going to get the information out of you."
I replied to his vague threat with silence. He got pissed, backhanded me across the face. I slowly brought my mug back to its former position, staring straight at him.
"Fuck you," I said, almost spitting at him. He threw a punch against my gut, his balled fist slamming into my body. I grunted and coughed, but was unfazed. "Is that the best you can do?" He threw a mean left hook on my jaw, almost knocking me out. Fortunately for me it didn't land just right for me to get knocked out, but I did managed to get stunned.
"I'm not a patient man, O'Donnell," continued Haskell. "I strongly suggest you tell me what you know."
"I don't know jack shit, dickhead!" I quickly yelled back. "Why don't you ask the other people there, huh?! Fuck you annoying me for?!"
"You're the low-hanging fruit, O'Donnell," replied Haskell in an exasperated manner. "You're nobody, a lone wolf. Easy pickings. Now just be a good boy and tell me what you goddamn know."
"The treasure is bullshit, you fucking idiot!"
Haskell was confused.
"Why the fuck do you think there was a nuclear blast there?! It was nukes! Fucking nukes! Then someone fucking swiped them before we came up, the nukes were long gone. Save for one, which was rigged to blow. Wipe the base off the map. But you don't know that, do you? No, because you're an idiot!"
The guy wasn't having it, and clocked me in the face once again. Then, he grabbed some sort of thingy from a nearby table. It looked like a thin metal tube with a handle and three prongs. He pressed a button, and the prongs lit up with electricity. Some sort of stun baton thing. He jabbed it in my chest, which gave me the shock of my life, causing me to scream out in pain. God that fucking hurt, like lightning shooting through my nerves.
"You can do better than that O'Donnell," Haskell said, the stubborn bastard. He jabbed the thing into me again, and just like before it hurt like Hell, like a million needles jabbing every single inch of my body all at the same time. Thought my eyeballs were gonna pop out with that. Once took it off me, I started gasping for breath, my chest feeling like it was getting crushed by a car. I coughed and hacked as I started to feel numb all over.
He kept pummeling away at me for what seemed to be forever, alternating between hitting me in the stomach, then the face, with his fists, then with a baton. Didn't know how much time had passed before I heard a few big knocks on the door. "Wave them off!" Haskell barked at the guard. Then, the bull terrier grabbed a scalpel from the table and put it close to my eye.
"They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul," he said. "Well, time to start breaking some windows." As the blade got closer to my left eyeball, the guard moved to open the door, which was when everything went sideways for Haskell quick.
The guard opened the door, and at that precise moment, that guy was blown away with a burst from what seemed to be an automatic blaster pistol. Haskell had no time to react before the new guy trained his pistol on him, and when he turned around, he got thrown into a panic, dropping the scalpel and putting his hands up in the air.
"Wait, wait!" said Haskell, almost instantly turning into an incoherent mess. "I-I-I-I-I can get you your money, I just need more time and-"
"Time?" asked the stranger, who wore a neat, clean black suit with a white shirt and solid blue tie. He seemed young. Real young. A turtle on top of that, wearing some sort of eye mask or something, also black. "You ran out of time long ago, Mr. Haskell, and money is of secondary importance to me and my family. What we really value is trust, and you have betrayed the trust we bestowed upon you."
"Mr. Blue, I-"
"Mr. Haskell. Every action has consequences. Now, it's time for you to find out what consequences your actions have wrought." The stranger fired a burst from his blaster, striking Haskell first in the chest, then the final shot hit him in the forehead, killing him before even hit the floor. I looked at Haskell's face, with a new hole right above his snout, adopting that terrified, thousand-yard stare most dead bodies have. Blood flowed like a waterfall out of the plasma hole, with the sides of the wound burning, letting off that ungodly burnt flesh smell. The finely-dressed assassin stepped towards Haskell's corpse and stared at it, making sure the guy really was dead. "Who are you?" he asked me without flinching, continuing to look upon his work.
"I'm nobody, just a merc," I said wearily, almost too beat to Hell to keep up this conversation.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Wolf O'Donnell."
"Hmm… I know that name. The name of the man who killed Olivia Bronstein."
He turned to look at me, at which point I noticed a few more things. His eyes… they were white. All white. Like he had cataracts or something, but worse. It was not milky white, it was paper white. Like, blinding light. Couldn't discern any irises, which made him even creepier. And he had these swords. Two of 'em, mounted on his back in a crisscross fashion. Curved swords, uchigatana. He also had this pin or something on his suit jacket, gold-plated. It was… a sort of stylized flower inside a circle, and within the flower were six smaller circles. When he faced me, he also holstered his pistol in what I assumed to be a shoulder holster, since he tucked it away underneath his jacket. It was a little big, jet-black. Kind of reminiscent of Paul's blaster, but a little different-looking too.
"Yeah… I got paid to kill her, by Eriksson Flynn in Iverson."
"I knew her." Now I started to get antsy.
"Hey, like I said, man, I was working a job to do the deed. Your real problem's with Flynn."
The assassin stared at me for a few seconds before speaking, but those seconds might as well have been days. "I don't know whether I should kill you… or thank you." Gave me a puzzled look on my face, that sentence did. He unsheathed one of his swords, which put the fear of God in me. He went behind me, and I just waited for the blade to slice open my throat, get jammed into my skull, or have my head lobbed clean off. Fortunately for me he just used the sword to cut off the zip-tie cuffs that bound my hands behind me on the chair. Then he cut off the tape that held my legs onto the legs of the chair. I was free, rubbing my chaffed wrists with my hands. I looked to the guy, who had stepped back in front of me, his eyes now regular-looking. They were deep dark blue, and his whole face looked considerably softer than when he first burst into the room. He put away his sword.
"Bronstein…" he continued, "was troubled. We told her 'You should go home, the nightmares won't be as bad in familiar surroundings.' I guess that didn't work and she fell further and further into madness. She hated what she became, and couldn't live with it. Her life had turned into a waking nightmare. Then you came along and put her out of her misery. In a sense… you freed her from herself."
I remembered those words now, the parting words of Olivia Bronstein, who tried to snipe my head off. "You freed me," I remember her saying.
"How do you know her?" I asked.
"We were friends," said the assassin softly. "Once. Long ago. Now she's little more than a memory."
"No hard feelings then?"
"The Olivia we knew and the Olivia you killed were not the same people, I assure you."
I nodded, and got up.
"Why'd you free me?"
"I've no reason to keep you here."
"You don't have a reason to untie me, either."
"Mmm."
The assassin went to a corner of the room and tossed me my shirt and jacket. I put them on and gathered the rest of my belongings, also kept there. He gestured with his hand for me to follow him, and I did. As we left the room I realized we were in some sort of basement, with pipes and dim lighting and shit. We went up some stairs, and into this run-down government building, it looked like. When we stepped back outside, it was dark, maybe midnight. Took a look at where I was, and it was the town's abandoned police station. Looked around me too, and the place was littered with bodies: Haskell's mercs. None of them seemed to have blaster holes in them, but they did look pretty sliced up, and pretty dead.
"What was the story with Bronstein anyway?" I asked, wondering why he knew her.
"Like I said before, she and I were friends," explained the sharply-dressed assassin. "We were part of… a special group of people. We did things that sometimes we're proud of, and sometimes we aren't, and we're never celebrated for it. But we didn't do it for the glory, I can assure you." Didn't wanna press any further, since it reeked of black ops shit and I was not gonna touch that bag of worms with a ten-foot pole.
"Who are you, anyway?" I asked, holding onto my side since it hurt like Hell.
"I'm Mr. Blue," he replied.
"Huh," I uttered. Kinda wasn't enjoying the whole evasiveness of his answers, but it's not like I was gonna badmouth a guy who just waded his way through a bunch of mercs like it was a Sunday stroll... to his face. "What was your beef with Haskell?"
"Business."
I nodded.
"Will I ever see you again?"
"Probably, depending on where you want your life to go."
I looked at him from head to toe, wondering how a kid like him could do so much damage.
"You're just a boy."
He looked unamused.
"Technically, I'm a teenager." Then, he started walking backwards, into the darkness.
"Thanks for the save, by the way," I said, totally put off by this weird teenager.
Mr. Blue just smiled at me before his figure started to melt into the blackness. Then, his eyes turned solid white again, which creepified me. In time, even those vanished. A few seconds after that, I couldn't even hear his footsteps. Just a slight wind from the west and my own breathing in the dead town.
I looted the bodies, including Haskell's, netting me a cool five grand in cash and cred chips. Wasn't gonna take the blasters, they were too bulky for me to carry by my lonesome. I hopped onto my bike and rode away from the ruins in the darkness. For sure I wasn't gonna forget the assassin, but there was also another surefire thing: this whole treasure business was now officially done and done in my book. Onto the next one, I thought.