"Killing feels great…?" Giorgio tapped his earpiece out of 'transmit' mode and turned around from the television screen to look towards Avise, who was in amongst the other guests. "Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, eh?"
"Rich fruit indeed." Avise intoned, lifting his head back to look down at Giorgio cryptically. There was a smattering of laughter surrounding Avise, but it had a strained quality – the handler could easily tell that the sight on the screen and Agapita's energetic affirmation had unnerved many of the spectators. They had welcomed 'Columbina' to the Gladiator Games, but that was because they'd expected her to be a novelty who could have amused them all with the funny floppy dance of a fish out of water; but this had been the crocodile leaping up onto the bank and savaging the sightseers. Even Giorgio's eyes had a searching, questioning quality that did not match the light tone that he had affected in his speech; he was inspecting Avise for signs that he was not telling all. "She's very dedicated, been psyching up for this for months." Avise shrugged noncommittally to the room.
Giorgio glanced around the room and turned back to one of the televisions with sudden decision; the Master of Ceremonies had evidently decided that it would not be conducive to a good show to let his audience brood on the matter. A whispered, inaudible command into his earpiece and the views of the televisions switched to multiple angles of a trio of Gladiators all within arm's length of each other but who apparently had no idea of the others' presence – two lurking on either side of a building corner while the third was backed up in the crook of the 'L' to catch a breather. The situation immediately provoked genuine laughter which Giorgio immediately began hamming up with some pantomime capering.
As a few patrons laughingly cried "It's behind you!" and "Oh no it isn't!" Avise thought about the scene that he had just witnessed. Curiously, he felt no strong emotion about Agapita making her first kill, of crossing the thresholds from civilian to soldier, and then soldier to fighter. It was in part familiarity – he'd seen others through this process, and had experienced it himself- but even so, given Agapita's unique situation and her relationship to Avise the handler wondered whether he ought to have responded in a more sensitive or expressive way. All there was, though, was the gentle burr of quiet satisfaction behind his eyes that everything was as it should be – that all was going according to plan.
Avise was yanked out of his reverie by the sudden switching of the scene back to a view of Agapita and a flurry of excited shouting from Giorgio – suddenly more animated with the prospect of something jucier than before. Avise tightened his jaw. That was the thing about plans – none ever survive the first contact.
Agapita frowned in frustration as she picked through the late Hachimaki's pockets, before standing up with a frustrated sigh. So many pistols used the near-universal 9x19 Parabellum ammunition, even the Taurus Millenium that Hachimaki carried – except that the contrary prat had to use a variant of the weapon with an American .40 cartridge! If there was a God, then He had a sense of humour.
Agapita heard the click of a hammer being pulled back behind her.
Witty, too.
"You're young, little miss." A woman's voice sounded out. "You've made a start here, but you've got a life ahead of you yet. Leave it at this, for now. There's plenty of time to make your score."
Agapita paused for a moment. "Er, are you asking me to surrender?"
"Don't get smart." Agapita heard a click of metal as the woman shifted her pistol's grip in her grasp.
"Could I have your name, at least?"
"You heard it during the MC's introductions already. Carlita Assaye." The voice sounded testy, on edge. Now stop stalling, I know all the tricks."
Carlita hissed angrily as she heard a spattering of gunfire in the distance – and then another separate flurry of shots, closer this time. She couldn't be attacked while she was retrieving the girl's marker, but any bullet could range in and spoil that prospect at any moment. Carlita cursed herself for her sentimentality – she should have just killed Columbina straight away, the girl had volunteered for this match and shouldn't have expected indulgences. The patrons would probably tut at her for bad form if she did it now, though – infuriating thing.
Carlita glanced back to Agapita to see her slowly shifting her position. "Turn around and I'll put a bullet in your head." Carlita snapped.
"What do you want me to do, then?" Agapita replied.
"Drop that toy of yours, now."
Agapita began to squat down towards the floor.
"No! Stop! Stand up!" Maria barked. "Take it by the barrel, between your thumb and middle finger. Hold your arm out, then let it fall."
Agapita paused for a moment. Carlita scowled harshly, shifted her stance, and jabbed her pistol forward in an angry gesture. "I'm losing patience, missy! Do as I say before I decide against letting you off easy!"
Agapita's shoulders rippled in a sigh. She thrust her arm out and released her hold on the Tanfoglio. It dropped—
-and she dropped with it, her legs relaxing and folding beneath her as she collapsed to the floor.
Carlita's eyes were on the pistol and by the time they darted back to the movement in her peripheral vision Agapita was already falling. Carlita fired instinctively, but the shot sailed well over the cyborg to hit the wall uselessly. Agapita tipped onto her back with her head towards the other gladiator, and snatched up the Tanfoglio again, holding it over her head and blasting eight shots at Carlita. The woman screamed and was thrown backwards by the wave of lead, falling to the ground and spurting arcs of blood as her body twisted with the bullets slashing through her.
Once Carlita was laid out on her own back, Agapita rolled herself onto her front. She kept her Tanfoglio trained on Carlita's body and the staircase that she had travelled up, in case anyone else thought that they could capitalise on another's distraction and destruction. Satisfied that she would not be strung into another fight, Agapita got back up to her feet, quietly pleased with herself that the manoeuvre had worked well.
There was a spontaneous outbreak of applause in the Executive Lounge as the camera showed Agapita's trick, but as Giorgio announced that "Carlita Assaye" was out of the fight Avise fixed on the name rather than the manoeuvre. Assaye… he knew that name. She used to be an officer – he'd met her a couple of times on training courses; and she'd also been one of a list of officers cashiered for "an attitude not conducive to good service" – politics, essentially. Small world after all…
Agapita was making her way through a block of houses whose bare concrete walls had been abandoned at the first storey, giving the area a character queerly reminiscent of the open ceilings of the FIBUA village back in the Agency's training area. Despite the dissonance of the situation, Agapita felt an unexpected but not unwelcome sense of reassurance as she slipped in textbook routines relentlessly practised during the intensive days of training before she was dispatched here – even to the extent where on a couple of occasions she had menaced the walls and fired at empty air because her muscles remembered her making those exact same movements when turning into a room full of plywood targets. She was brought back to mind the particular reason she was here when her earpiece informed her that Fabio Caprise had surrendered and quit the match—
-and when a shot flashed past her eyes to smack a chunk out of the wall beside her.
A woman had rounded the corner while Agapita had been distracted with the status update, and it had only been the woman's instinctual snap-fire on sighting an enemy which had spared Agapita from getting her skullcase cracked. Agapita's brain knew that her new enemy would correct for a second shot and that there was no time to aim a response, so she fled back into the room she was leaving, bullets skipping and nipping at her heels and shoulders as she ran – the gladiator that she was facing now evidently preferred weight of fire to time-consuming accuracy, and indeed was using a VP70M (the same sort of pistol that Claes had employed back when she was on active service) which could fire semi-automatic bursts. As the gladiator pursued her into the room Agapita dove through an empty window-frame and rolled into cover on the far side of the wall, even as the edges of the gap in the wall were widened by relentless harrying fire chewing away at them.
The gladiator spat a curse at an opportunity lost as her quarry scurried away, like a squeaking little mouse darting for the hole in the sideboard. After using the last of the rounds in her magazine to see if she could harass the girl further by shooting through the walls (with no luck, as the shots only chiselled away at the concrete), the gladiator loaded and used the momentary lull to keep an ear out for her target's movement – she couldn't detect the crunch of gravel that would indicate she was moving away, so was she planning to pop up or blindfire over the window again? The gladiator began slowly creeping towards the corner of the room to put herself at an oblique angle to whatever would appear in the window.
A thin hair of a detail tickled in the gladiator's peripheral vision. She looked up – for her face to meet two bullets as Agapita had sprung up to the top of the wall above her.
It seemed that Agapita was becoming the star of the show back in the Executive Lounge. If her last exploit in killing Carlita Assaye had provoked applause, this encounter provoked a shiver of gasps. While a nine-foot wall wasn't an insurmountable obstacle to any trained soldier (Avise had done plenty of obstacle courses in his own time), to the patrons' eyes Agapita was a small girl – and she had not only scaled the wall but bound up it, hopping straight to the top in a single jump rather than spending time pulling herself up for the gladiator to have noticed and shot Agapita off at her leisure. While most of the gathering seemed to be enjoying the show Avise noticed that Giorgio, and a few of the more farsighted patrons were looking a little perturbed at Agapita's uncommon feat. Giorgio's jaw continued to open wide as he commentated enthusiastically, but in contrast to the lower half his face his brow was furrowed and his eyes were peering at the televisions closely. Avise frowned, and shifted his feet, feeling his chest holster through his shirt as his position changed.
Agapita had chased the thin fading breath of grunting and gasping heard at the edge of her vision, only to encounter Fabio Caprise clutching his side and limping in the direction of the aid station. His complaining had also attracted further attention – as Agapita reached him, so too did the foreigner Dylan Cromber.
Her handler liked Spaghetti Westerns – the night before they'd left the Agency for the hotel in Ragusa they'd watched Sergio Leone's Per qualche dollaro in più together in his room. Whenever there was a standoff, with the grizzled, swarthy, grimy gunslingers fixing each other with gazes alternately impassive, laden, and burning, the extras made themselves scarce. It was not cheapness or desolation to do so – it left the scene to be filled by the stature of the heroes instead, and for their confrontation to enjoy purity and intensity of concentration, without it being defaced or diluted by the gawping of spectators (even the patrons here had the courtesy to stay a step removed through the cameras dotted across the estate). Two upstanding men in a true test of their might and mettle...
...weren't quite as much in evidence when there was an ungainly cripple stumbling and staggering between them.
It was almost comical. Both Dylan and Agapita wanted to do away with each other, but each also knew of the severe punishment that would be meted out for shooting someone who had quit the match. So the two gladiators sidestepped down the street, occasionally nudging or nosing around the mobile cover that was Fabio, the piggy in the middle - the stuck pig of some overgrown juvenile game. Fabio himself was quietly terrified, but with the leaking injury in his side all he could do was continue to shuffle forward in his agonisingly slow progress towards the edge of the estate, his fretful nervous energy all expended in sending his frantic eyeballs rolling crazily about his head. And so, they carefully handled their ginger walk with its fragile cargo – stumbling a couple of times as the sound of gunfights elsewhere in the estate intruded in on them, but never letting it drop and shatter.
In the films, eyes also wandered and darted, as the gunmen examined stances, gauged alliances, remembered grudges, anticipated betrayals, considered skills and tested attacks, and sought to guess – and ultimately chance at – just what interpretive machinery was grinding in the head of their opponents. Agapita was no different. She liked orders, their certainity and reassurance solidifying approaches in her head and putting her into the cyborg's necessary state of concentration. The regulations of the match were an order in themselves, and so were bright in Agapita's mind during this scenario which had been concocted entirely by the specific prohibition of the rules...
...prohibitions.
The Master of Ceremonies had warned them about the dire consequences for "firing on" the surrendered... but he had issued no such ban on other types of handling.
With a cyborg's speed Agapita smartly stepped forward into the street and shoved Fabio aside and down to the ground, moving into his position before the wounded man had time to even squawk. Dylan had quick reactions and immediately fired, but as he'd originally been aiming to the side of the obstructing Fabio his shot only tore the denim of Agapita's sleeve and peeled a little flesh from her arm – while Agapita planted four lead kisses into Dylan's chest.
Dylan fell backwards with a muffled gurgle as pink bubbles frothed up out of his punctured lungs and drowned his dying scream in his throat. Fabio was howling more loudly, swearing that something had torn in the fall. Not wanting to be responsible for Fabio bleeding out before he had left the field, Agapita reached down to roughly hauled him back onto his feet with one strong arm to push him on his way – noticing as she did so the wound which her conditioning had completely obscured.
Agapita frowned with genuine sorrow as she examined the injury. It was small – only one step up from a graze. Would it count? Agapita hoped that it wouldn't, or rather knew that it shouldn't, but she was sure that the other girls in the dormitory would fixate on it as if it did, precisely to needle her. To have something so... trivial as her first field injury! It was embarrassing – something so mundane and superificial would make her the laughing stock of the second generation, giving the impression that she feared getting stuck in and was trying to clumsily make do with something lesser to avoid the greater and more noble scars that she lacked the courage to receive. Her cheeks were stinging with the scorn of the cool clique, and Agapita tried to soothe the seat-squirming embarrassment churning within her by saying that while everyone else was using boring old automatics, she had just been shot – well, glanced – by a Colt Anaconda, an extravagant oversized revolver. Didn't that detail make it unique?
Agapita scowled to the air and kicked the dirt of the unfinished road petulantly. She knew that trying to say that would be shot down as reaching before it even taxied onto the runway. Throwing the distressed and still-struggling Fabio an angry glower, she stalked over to the next building.
It was laughter this time around, as Dylan and Agapita conducted their invisible tennis rally over the net of the hapless Fabio. Everyone was absorbed by the sight, such that the announcement that Enzo Jannis had been wounded and surrendered elsewhere in the match was even delayed by a minute as everyone demanded that the cameras stay with the strange trio. Agapita was rapidly becoming the star attraction and even when her unexpected prowess had upset other patrons' bets they could shrug their loss off and enjoin in the spirit of sportsmanship. Altogether, Giorgio's casting decision was proving to be a huge success – but he didn't look too pleased by it. Avise watched him as he held a quiet and subdued conversation with a small group of a few more of the more venerable patrons – they were conscious of Avise's scrutiny and glanced over to him on a few occasions. Eventually the group parted and Giorgio made his way across the room to Avise.
"Is she on drugs?" He asked tersely.
"What makes you say that?" Avise replied, a little too loudly so that other patrons might notice the Master of Ceremonies' discomposure.
Giorgio scowled openly. "She was hit and she didn't even flinch – and then lifted up Caprise with that injured arm, too. Is she tripping?"
"Did she look like she was spaced out on crack?" Avise growled. "Besides, do you really think I'd demand something like that of my daughter?"
"You're already having people shoot at her to settle your debts, Mister De Marchese." Giorgio grated, his eyes flicking from side to side as he saw other patrons turning from the screens to the sideshow developing right there in the lounge. What a splendid Master of Ceremonies Giorgio was, he provided all kinds of entertainment!
"Columbina just has great... self-possession, that's all," Avise explained her resistance to pain, and then continued, again unnecessarily loudly, "and besides, what would it matter if she did have a bit of 'performance enhancement'? It's not as if any money is changing hands here."
Giorgio leaned in close to Avise. "I'm the games master here. I don't like being played."
The Master of Ceremonies swept around extravagantly and expansively to launch straight back into his match commentary and mask the troublesome exchange. Avise was distracted by a few prods and pokes from other patrons – some wanted to congratulate him for holding his own against Giorgio, whereas others were made suspicious by Giorgio's accusations and warned Avise that it was bad form to impose on the gathering when he had appeared only at their invitation and indulgence. Avise nodded in understanding and made polite small-talk with the other patrons – and he also noticed a guard entering the room, with an armoured vest on over his suit.
Agapita hissed as a shot snatched past and knocked her beret off her head. She dropped back down behind the wall and clamped it back on her head again before quickly reloading and bouncing up to pop off another few shots, ducking again as another near-miss plucked at the seam of her shoulder. She had encountered Jonas Quinn in another rank of unfinished buildings – Jonas had some agility and proficiency, and this was proving to be a much more even and intensive fight as they squatted down, darting from side-to-side underneath chest-high walls before popping up to loose quick flurries of rounds at the other.
It was fast and frantic, hasty and hurried, immediate and intense, with both cyborg and gladiator sparking along as they rose and fell and fired. Power seemed to be conducted between them – they jumped up from cover at the same time, aimed at each other in perfect alignment—
-and dropped back down again as their earpieces both blared simultaenoeusly, "All gladiators, freeze!"
Agapita pressed her back against the wall – she realised that she was panting, and sweating.
"Good going, Marchese!" Jonas's voice carried over to her from his own cover, and she could tell that he was breathless as well. "But it's not over yet!"
Agapita was about to respond with some trashtalk of her own – it could be a useful tactic, sometimes disrupting the enemy's concentration – when she was interrupted by the radio coming to life again.
"Attention all gladiators. There is a change to the rules of engagement. We are introducing a lightning round!"
"Oh boy! Lightning round!" Jonas laughed manically, relief surging through him. His cackle was so loud and his feeling so honest that it carried past his cover and to Agapita.
"What's a 'lightning round'? Agapita called out over her own wall, eyeing a nearby camera warily.
"It's, ha, it's, hahaha – you know how lightning earths itself along the easiest route, right?"
Agapita shifted her grip on the pistol in readiness to fire again as soon as Giorgio saw fit to finish off his speech and end the time-out. "...Yes." she said eventually. By some happy help from blessed Providence, her handler had done clouds in class literally the day before the fratello had set out on this mission.
"It's like how they put lightning rods at the top of tall buildings," the words tumbled out of the gladiator's mouth, relating the concept solidifying his relief and magnifying his joy, "the shock goes to the most exalted position. If one gladiator is doing exceptionally well, they'll occasionally throw this in to spice it up, level it out for us and let him really see if he's got the right stuff. All of the remaining gladiators ally together against the top performer!"
Agapita gritted her teeth. From Jonas's easy manner she could tell that he hadn't been paying much attention to previous match updates, but she knew from the tally in her head of gladiators killed and surrendered that—
"All gladiators!" Giorgio declared, his voice resounding through the PA system. "Kill Columbina De Marchese!"
Jonas stopped laughing. His joy died in his throat, clenched shut by a second's seized tension, and then he vaulted over the intervening walls, sprinting towards Agapita.
"Biiiiiiiitttccchhh!"
Jonas moved with adrenalin-stoked speed, catching even Agapita off-guard – by the time she'd processed his approach he was already hurling himself over her cover and crashing down on top of her. Jonas's weight pressed Agapita down into the dirt – all that prevented her from getting a bullet in the head or side while she was pinned was her cybernetic strength. With a convulsing thrust of her arms Agapita threw Jonas off her and back over the wall – following the startled Jonas over, she put half-a-dozen bullets into him before the impact could even force the breath from his lungs.
Wasting no time in contemplating the body, Agapita rolled off of Jonas and into and kneeling position. She glanced over the walls surrounding her – no-one else had closed on her position yet, but the reports would attract attention to her even if Giorgio, currently relating her position over the radio, didn't.
"...all gladiators, your quarry is currently located in grid D4. Happy hunting!" Giorgio smiled as he tapped his earpiece.
"What the Hell?" Avise stepped forward in anger. Truthfully, he wasn't particularly worried – he'd been around cyborgs for over half a year now, he knew what they could do – but if he was to keep up the guise of the concerned father then he had to show some outrage. "What the fuck is this shit you're pulling, Giorgio?"
"Language, please, Mister De Marchese!" Giorgio chastised the foul-mouthed and impolite guest. "The modern world is already so vulgar - a little decorum is much appreciated!" His eyes sparkled, flashing with sly pleasure of mischief.
"You can't seriously be going along with this?" He threw his arms out in appeal to the entire gathering. "It's... it's unfair!" It was a plain word, but he threw all of his emphasis in the final world, as though he could reach out to touch some fundamental base element in their consciences.
The patrons glanced at each other, but no second to Avise's protest was forthcoming. With more than half of the gladiators already dead or withdrawn, most of their bets and selected gladiators had already failed so there was no honour or prestige to be redeemed by joining Avise and giving their fighters an even challenge again; and for the remainder, they were amongst friends – the Games were fun, but if it came to a decision then they valued enjoying a collective spectacle together before point-scoring over each other.
Avise scowled and span round to Giorgio again, but he stumbled to a stop when he found a guard in front of him. Two more guards had come into the room while the argument was being waged, taking up positions on the upper level at the back of the lounge. All three had MP5K submachine-guns hanging down by their sides.
"We'll take that pistol from you now, Mister De Marchese." Giorgio stood to one side with a quiet, gentle smile – nothing so blunt and crude as a smug grin, naturally. Some of the patrons gasped and giggled at the prospect of a bit of drama.
Avise didn't move. Giorgio coughed. "All parents are convinced that their children are special, I'm sure. Any father would be delighted at the prospect for their doted darling to show up the neighbours. Now you have an opportunity to see just what a unique snowflake your precious daughter is."
"Oh, you don't know the half of it, chevalie." Avise growled. He would have preferred Agapita to have wiped out all of the gladiators and be back at the villa before they revealed themselves, but an officer had to be flexible and responsive.
The guard standing in front of Avise took a step towards him.
There were thirteen gladiators, including Agapita ("unlucky for some" Giorgio had chuckled at his consciously lame pun). Agapita had killed five, and three others had retired from the match in other incidents – that left four targets to contend with.
Agapita yelped as a bullet bit into her shoulderblade. Five targets, if she included herself.
Roaring, if more in anger than pain, Agapita used the momentum of the impact to help spin her around and retaliate at wretched little rat that had shot her in the back. Her fire was undisciplined and flew well wide of the attacker – who she recognised as Ryba Sedlacek – while Ryba continued to calmly keep up the attack, putting another bullet in Agapita's gut. While Ryba was still some distance away and at long range the round only bruised against her abdominal cushion, she was closing rapidly and Agapita knew that she was at a disadvantage in this exchange. The cyborg turned away to flee towards the nearest building, a small free-standing three-storey apartment block.
She heard the pattering of footfalls behind her, and Ryba's harsh, angry rasp: "Watch yourselves! The cunt's rabid, she's on PCP – I tagged her but she's still moving…!" Agapita left the other woman's gesticulations behind as she dashed into the building and pounded up the stairs towards the top floor without breath or pause.
As soon as she reached the upper landing Agapita dashed through the empty rooms, the soles of her shoes crackling along a bed of plaster chips that had steadily crumbled from the ceilings, and the plastic cladding of wires for unfitted lights batted at her face. Looking out of the windows of the third apartment on the floor found her mark – three of the gladiators had entered the building and were clearing the rooms cautiously (at least she assumed so – she'd been up here for over a minute and no-one had come up behind her), but the fourth was patrolling outside, circling the building to catch Agapita if she tried to make escape through a window. And, to be fair, it was a sound strategy – she was.
Agapita looked out of the window for a second more to fix the ranges in her head – it was quite safe to do so as the gladiator naturally wasn't expecting anyone to escape from three floors up…
Geronimo.
You could say that the gladiator actually had the better deal of it. Of that band of brothers, those whose vocation carries them on to stir beyond and lift themselves up out of the cold and wet furrow of mere mortal life, those with the pride and dignity to seek death in the conflagration of violence rather than the stuttering dwindle of miserable peace… not many could attest to meeting their end looking up a skirt before their skull, neck and ribcage was smashed to powder.
Agapita rolled off of the cushion, which squelched and popped beneath her. The gladiator had only had time to inhale before the plummeting Agapita had smashed into him, and she hoped that she would be able to use this to re-enter the building stealthily and come up behind the final trio – naturally spoiled when that infernal man creeping on her ear like an insistent fly just had to pipe up and declare "Mamma mia, it's-a Mario!". A great wit.
A confused-looking face appeared at the window near Agapita – she flung some shots out at him but her was already falling back into the room. With a frustrated growl Agapita vaulted through the empty frame back into the building, actively angry that a plan was being undermined. The room was large and empty – presumably originally intended to be some sort of common room – and unhelpfully, had multiple entrances. Agapita couldn't see any of her targets, but with a twitch of her ear she could hear a sound bouncing between the walls…
"…this bitch is just going to pick us off like some slasher if we split up to encircle her. We're going to have to risk a charge. Three of us at once, and she might not hit anyone. Ready? Three, two, one—"
Fire bloomed from each entrance. The din of deafening reports rebounded off and intensified in the enclosed space until the sound of firing overrode all other sense, sheer noise blinding the brain.
Ryba's return to awareness was slow, like how you clench your eyes shut after stinging citrus is spurted into them. She was left with her ears ringing and whistling, her nostrils burning from the stench of baccarite, her cheeks hot, sunspots from the muzzle flashes swimming in her retinas –
And beyond them, the sore sight of Columbina De Marchese on her back, with at least eight red stains spreading across her chest.
For the first time in a long time, Ryba laughed. Not the light joy of relief – there was none of that left in her twisted body – but the harsh, leering nasty sneer of condescension. She turned around to her sudden allies. "Good job Envio, Turreil—" Ryba stopped. Turreil's long career had just come to an end face-down on a dusty concrete floor.
Envio himself was leaning against a doorframe to catch a breather, his empty pistol almost falling through his loose, sweat-slick grip. After gulping in some breaths, he followed Ryba's gaze to Turreil's body. The two gladiators looked at each other. With the turn of a card, that could easily have been either of them face-down in the dirt.
"Sucks to be him, eh?" Ryba grinned.
They both laughed.
Envio walked over to the girl's body and gave her a rough kick in the side. "Her, too. Pretty damn good for her age, but if you fly too close to the sun—"
Agapita lifted up her pistol and shot Envio up through his chin.
"What—" Ryba's eyes instinctively turned to Envio's blood spurting over the ceiling, and by the time she looked down to Agapita three more shots had torn across her abdomen. Her face transfixed in pain – she could not scream as the breath seemed to simply drop out of her – her pistol dropped from her hands as she clutched her midriff and she staggered back to slam heavily against the wall and slide back down to the floor.
"How?" Ryba seethed through clenched teeth as she clutched he side, feeling the blood throb up between her pressed fingers. The warmth felt oddly viscous, like treacle, as it spread over her hands. Agapita was standing up. "You fucking bitch, I saw you die! You weren't wearing armour! You were shot, you bled, and you fell!" She had beaten this girl, but as she advanced on Ryba anyway – her shirt ragged and blotchy with red stains – the older woman saw her victory being snatched away by some smarmy, impudent cheat. Tears of indignation beaded at the corner of red, stinging eyes, raging at the injustice of her struggle and effort – her life – battering against a solid wall of futility – that wall that had not cracked or crumbled for all the years she had hammered at it. "Spadas! Uhynes!" She shrieked hoarsely.
Agapita came to a stop before Ryba. For a second, she looked down on the 'gladiator' with a neutral expression, and then it deepened into an angry frown.
"Of course I fell!" Agapita snapped harshly. She took a hand away from her pistol grip – still keeping it trained on Ryba with her other – and tugged at her shirt. The fabric near one of the bullet holes tore a little. "I was shocked! I was hoping that I'd be able to last longer before taking my first real injury, until you and your cronies over there spoiled it. Do you know how much stick I'm going to get from my friends for being penetrated on my very first job?" Agapita ended on a tremulous, quavering note, as though she was on the verge of tears herself – she was hurt, but not from the wounds.
Ryba stared, baffled. She would have laughed, if her torn diaphragm would have actually let her. Was this how it ended, with some obnoxious cunt mocking her with some sarcastic girly trash?
"Fuck you! Fuck you with a fucking lead pipe!" Ryba snarled, in Italian so she could make damn well sure that the vile creature could hear her. "See you in Hell!"
"Hell…?" Agapita froze. She stared at Ryba for a long, laden moment – the colour drained out of her face and her expression hollow, as if Ryba's last snapping bite had actually sunk into her. Agapita trembled, and Ryba, seeing her enemy falter, dared to twitch a movement of her own, making to squirm along the wall outside the line of the shivering gun barrel pointed at her.
She had longer to travel to make herself safe, though, as the quaking aim would no longer fly straight towards her but could travel in any direction – but her meagre attempt to escape brought Agapita's attention back down to the world around her again. She narrowed her eyes at Ryba.
"Not likely. Not before. Not now. Not after. Not ever."Agapita spat in a savage whisper, and then shot Ryba in the heart. Ryba seized, gagged for a few seconds, then fell slack, and died.
For the first time, Giorgio's confident smile faded. "What?"
"I said, I'm from the Social Welfare Agency," Avise hocked a thumb at the scene played out over the television screens, "and that should be your proof. Do you really want to take this any further, chevalie?"
Giorgio flicked his gaze from side to side. Disquiet had settled over the patrons – not only from the sight of seeing a girl get back up after being riddled with bullets, but the fact that even if none of them had heard the term "Social Welfare Agency" before, they could tell that it sounded something alarmingly like government. "I don't know what you're talking about." Giorgio grumbled.
"Please, chevalie, and I'm the Emperor of China." Avise laughed, remembering a neat line that Alessandro Ricci had spun at him once. "An eminent and august Captain of Industry such as yourself, surely your sophisticated circles discuss weighty matters of the state."
"It's a bluff. You're bluffing. You're lying." Giorgio licked his lips. "You're fucking lying. The Agency cyborgs are only little kids, everyone knows that. That's the whole fucking point of them. Not grown women! Not grown women!"
"Well, I've got the improved model." Avise couldn't help but smirk. As unprofessional as it was, he felt like some movie villain revealing the doomsday device, and it thrilled him.
"Giorgio…" Mrs. Ethergill stepped forward, her voice wavering, "what does he mean? What's he talking about…"
"SHUT UP!" Giorgio, his composure snapping, swung his head around and bawled a spit-flecking bellow at the elderly woman. "Shut up you shrivelled Limey bint!" Mrs. Ethergill went white, looking as though she was on the verge of tears.
Some of the more farsighted patrons were already edging towards the door in what they hoped was a surreptitious and unremarkable manner. Giorgio clenched his teeth. Any pretence at a collected and unconcerned manner was not so much discarded as thrown down and crushed underfoot. "Okay, Mister De Marchese, if that's the way you want to play it. I know enough about you child molestors to know that those little fucktoys of yours won't do anything to harm the dicks that rape them. Pretty mystifying 'plan' of yours, that separated you like this."
Avise shrugged, unconcerned. "She needs the exercise."
"If she needs a workout she can bounce all night on top of me, and she will do once you're in our power, idiot." Giorgio spat. You could imagine the acid bubbling through the floor. Despite the crude remarks, Giorgio's eyes weren't open with delight but narrow with rage - the words seemed to Avise to be something more to aggrieve the handler than actual intent. the threat of the guard in front of him was real enough, though. "Now, give Jacen there your pistol and I might just let you watch."
Avise sighed and unbuttoned his jacket. He extracted his Webley, shifting his grip on it so it was being held by the barrel – and a little of the body. He held it out for the guard in front of him to take – and then the handler opened his palm, gravity made it rotate, and he closed it again with his hand around the grip, covering 'Jacen'.
The guard froze. The spectators gasped. Avise grinned. "Finally. It took me months to learn that trick."
The guard's jaw popped open and closed like a goldfish as his eyes trembled in their sockets, staring at the awful black hole in front of him but unwilling to fix on it. It was a scarce moment, a fraction of second, before he rallied and started forward, making to club Avise's hand aside with the butt of his own weapon – but that was all Avise required to pull back the Webley's hammer and fire.
Three shots banged out, lifting up with the revolver's recoil. The first two thudded dully against the guard's chest, only producing puffs of fabric as they were stopped by his armoured vest – but the third punched through his exposed throat with the loud click of deforming cartilage. The gathering spasmed towards the walls as gore burst back from the nape of the guard's neck. At first they only quailed – the sight was shocking, but by that same token impossible and unreal and difficult to comprehend. The spectators did not hold for long, though, as the guard staggered backwards, his weapon falling from his grasp and jerking on its lanyard like a spastic puppet while his fingertips picked and stretched at the edges of the tunnel bored through his neck as though he could somehow sweep breath into himself. He then drunkenly swung around as his balance faltered, confronting everyone with the awful stretching distended rubber of a drained face in which the eyes seemed to get lost and vanish, and a loose gaping maw whose lips slapped and rippled together, drowning on the very air it galloped into him. He emitted a reedy, rough sigh spattered with pink sputum, lurched forward, and sprawled down.
Pandemonium.
Chaos churned in front of Avise as the spectators disintegrated into a flailing mob, fear and flight overcoming all other sense and thought, crashing against each other and crushing through the exit. The pell-mell panic was what saved Avise, as the other two guards responding to the death of their colleague had to aim high, trying to angle their shots above the heads of their employers. Avise threw himself prone, his head unflatteringly landing between the dead man's legs but keeping him alive as a storm of automatic fire blew out the glass plates behind him in a deafening crash that sounded like rain being buffeted and balled into a solid fist by a gale. It was only a second's respite, and Avise hastily fired off the remaining three shots in his Webley at the second guard standing on the upper level. Two were hopelessly wild, only knocking hunks of plaster out of the walls, but the third exploded the glass balustrade that the guard was standing behind and the guard sank down, screaming as shards dug into his thighs and shins. Avise immediately dropped his empty pistol and scrabbled forward over the carpet and the first guard's body to grab his MP5K. Avise couldn't pull the lanyard out from underneath the body, though, and fear that the remaining guard was only an instant away from opening up on him again caused him to come up firing as he yanked as hard as he could to pull the lanyard along the length of the guard's outstretched arm, stitching the entire magazine down the carpet, disintegrating a chair, up the entire length of the final guard's leg and groin, across his chest and through his shoulder, before smacking a final arc towards the ceiling and blowing out a pair of light fittings in a shower of sparks and splinters. The MP5K's lanyard became caught on the first guard's watch, and Avise tripped forward and fell down as it suddenly pulled taut across his legs. Gasping at a second bruising impact with the floor, Avise immediately pulled himself up—
-to meet the gaze of Giorgio staring at him from around the corner of a settee…
…and a Desert Eagle lying on the ground just inches away from the chevalier's hand.
Agapita paused to wheeze for a short while and flood her body with as much oxygen that her laboured lungs could handle. It was necessary to take her along the next few hundred yards up the rough, steep slope of scrub and crumbling dirt from the estate to the villas. Her chest had been burning hotter and fiercer than Avise had ever pushed her on the tracks back at the Agency compound, and while conditioning had rapidly quenched that fire, it couldn't disguise the coppery tang coating her tongue and speckling the back of her hand when she coughed. An internal diagnostic showed up the weaknesses of the second generation, telling her that the barrage of fire that had knocked her down hadn't only ruined the dress that had been bought specially for her but had broken through her intercostal carapace and punctured five lung cells, reducing her breathing capacity by more than half. Her reserve multilung had been activated to compensate, but even so she was heady and breathless, her lung cells working frantically to scrub every last atom of oxygen from every breath. Still, she shouldn't complain – damaged as she was, if it wasn't for the science filling her body then she would already be dead. A lazy smile wandered across Agapita's face as her brain was instructed to release a wave of warmth of appreciation for her friends and keepers at the Social Welfare Agency.
The smile flattened again as Agapita looked up towards the villas above her and the requirements of the mission came forward in her mind once more. The infernal absurdity of the "Lightning Round" had spoiled the plan: they hadn't meant to turn on the patrons until after the battle was over and Agapita had already suitably thinned out the herd of fighters by winning. Agapita had momentarily fretted and paced about the body of Ryba Sedlacek, the lack of clear direction after the failure of the plan leaving her at loss, but when she had heard shots above her the prime directive of any cyborg had offered her the clarity to continue. The exchange of fire coming down from the top of the hill had now faded, indicating to her that her handler had successfully thwarted opposition (the notion that he might have failed never entered her head), but she would need to get up to him to support him against potential retaliation. Sucking in one final breath, Agapita pushed off again and ran through the scrub.
The terrain was difficult and uneven, but that was precisely why Agapita was making her way through it. Not two hundred yards to her left there was a paved path running up from the estate towards the villas, initially quite straight but turning into a zig-zag as it approached the steeper upper reaches of the concave slope; while it would have sped her progress, particularly given her condition, it would also have left her more exposed to fire – which her condition now precisely did not allow her to risk. The wisdom of her strategy was soon made apparent when she hopped over a rock and the first ranging shots began fell down in a semicircle in front of her.
Agapita immediately threw herself down to the ground, and with no needless alacrity either as the fire, having marked her, suddenly intensified into a withering hailstorm. It seemed as though the world was suddenly inverted, that the ground was digging itself up and burying Agapita – her ears were filled not with the reports of distant gunfire but the roaring of earth as her eyesight dissolved into a bitter and bitty yellow fog and pebbles and clods rained down onto her – much like shovelfuls filling a grave. Still the sound drowned out all else, as though an avalanche was fond of its intimidating bellow and ran in circles around its victim to torment him before sweeping him off the mountainside. The pinning barrage could only have lasted at most ten seconds, but with her heightened awareness Agapita traced every dropping, spinning, disintegrating piece of earth as an individual grain in an hourglass. When the firestorm ended, it slackened off as quickly as it had sped up – not stopping completely, but dwindling to an intermittent sputter of incoming rounds that snatched at drifting threads of the settling dust as they zipped overhead, without stirring any more up. The lightening load allowed Agapita to risk stealing a glance upwards to see what she was confronted with.
The source of the threat was over at the very path that she had been avoiding – a pair of guards was chivvying along a group of six to eight patrons down towards the estate, and from there presumably to the boat on the pontoon at its far end. The guards looked faintly ridiculous – with armoured vests over suits, and then high-visibility jackets over them as though they were living signposts for the patrons – but the weapons in their hands were real enough. Both men carried FN FAL assault rifles (The AK47 of the West, an anonymous voice in the back of her head said knowledgeably), and could use them to some fair effect, as the dramatically increased local mineral content of the soil could attest. The fire that she was under had decreased because one of the guards had turned away to keep driving the patrons along, making sure that his wards – and his paycheque – didn't succumb to their civilian flightiness and panic and scatter from the proximity of gunfire. In the meantime his partner was firing deliberate semi-automatic bursts to make sure that Agapita couldn't become too relaxed.
Agapita grimaced as she saw the patrons disappear down the slope around the rim of her vision. There were four separate interdiction fratelli on standby to gather up any fishes that slipped through the mesh in her and her handlers' net, but they were supposed to be a reserve, a backup, a failsafe. While she didn't bear the other cyborgs any enmity this was nonetheless her first mission and it was important to show what she could do and establish her worth and potential, so it vexed her that her mission would be imperfect. While her conditioning intervened to cut the link that would have led to her leaping up in a foolhardy attempt to drive the patrons back while there were still two assault rifles pointed at her, it could not prevent those feelings' expression.
At that moment Agapita realised that the interval for the bursts of suppressive fire being directed at her was longer than usual – glancing up, she noticed the guard fumbling with a new magazine while his companion still harangued the last straggling patrons in the group that they were shepherding. While it seemed that the priority of the guards was escape, keeping her head down so that they could get away rather than press home the assault, the fact remained that Agapita was under attack and her conditioning told her exactly what she needed to do. Besides, the nice lie-down that she had just enjoyed had granted her a good long rest.
Agapita immediately punched up into a sprint, ignoring the wiry briars scratching at her shins and tearing a gouge along the ground towards the two guards. She was exhausting her limited stamina in one burst, but her legs propelled her across almost the entire ground separating her from her two enemies, provoking audible cries of alarm from them. Retaliatory fire was immediate but hasty, with long bursts streaming widely on either side of her and only crossing together when Agapita had already rolled down into a depression for cover and recovery, her ragged lungs shrieking piteously. For a full half-minute Agapita gasped for air, her chest veritably oscillating at a sprinter's pace itself, while more fire continued to knock clods of dirt out of the lip of the dip above her head. Then it abruptly stopped, cutting out at once. Agapita shifted her head slightly as a rolling piece of gravel pattered down and tickled her nose. She could guess that these guards held self-preservation in high esteem – no use in being paid heaps more than a meagre military salary as a mercenary if you weren't there to collect it at the end of the day – and they were trying to tempt her out rather than advance on her and risk a prepared shot to the face as soon as they headed into view. It suited Agapita's purposes anyway – while she was just inside her Tanfoglio's effective range, she wanted to close the distance a little more to ensure accuracy.
Feeling ready to make another bound, Agapita scrambled out of the dip and tumbled towards the protection of a large rock in a half-run, half-crawl with a posture that was almost bent double, clumsy and ungainly but at least presenting a smaller profile as she was exposed. She threw an arm out as she moved and fired half a dozen shots herself – all unaimed and jerking wildly with her gait but hopefully enough to make the guards keep their heads down. Her enemies were already down, though – they had gone prone on the far side of the path and Agapita's bullets sailed harmlessly over their heads, while she was in full exposed sight to their blazing response to her emergence. A lancing pain driving into her side informed Agapita that a kidney had been destroyed, and as she approached the rock that she had been running towards her left leg simply went numb.
Agapita fell rather than dove behind her new cover, landing with a winding impact that knocked what little threads of breath still remained in her ruined chest – lots of ventilation, but sadly not much circulation. As she began the troublesome process of filling up her depleted stamina again, Agapita inspected her damaged leg, grimacing openly when she saw that there was a visible chunk of muscle missing from her thigh near the ragged hem of her dress, staring at her like an ulcer. Agapita twitched to test her leg's movement and found that while it could work, it felt weighted with inertia, as though she wasn't pulling her leg but rather a cord which then pulled the leg, losing energy and control in the process. As Agapita was surveying this, another part of her head noticed that the fire from the two guards had now stopped completely, with not even the occasional reminding shot chipping away at her rock. Her ears couldn't pick out any crunching earth to indicate that the two guards were making a move, so they were still covering her, but the lack of fire suggested that they were both running low on ammunition after that last fusillade – yet as dearly as she would have liked to, Agapita couldn't put much faith in them running out.
What to do? She could simply lie here and wait until the two guards decided that she had passed out or given up and used it as an opportunity to get away, but the prospect of letting enemies escape, particularly in her first mission where she needed to make a good impression, rankled with her – and in any case it would be a further delay separating her from her handler when he would need her, which was intolerable. Agapita needed to respond in some way, but the analytical part of her brain pulled her down and said quite curtly and sternly that rising up to a position on top of the rock or rolling out beside it would only result in a faceful of lead.
Shirting her body around, Agapita risked a quick flash of a glance around the edge of the rock to check the position of her two adversaries, trusting her eyes to photograph what it would take an ordinary human long seconds of study to discern. Immediately there was the buzzing sting of a bullet past her ear, the whipping crack of a second scarring the rock above her, and then her vision was obscured as a third kicked up a cloud of dirt and ricocheted up to smash her cheekbone. Agapita fell back behind the rock, teeth and eyes clenched and humming with pain as her entire skull seemed to buzz from the impact like a rung bell. But even as her eyes were closed, a scene was etching itself into the back of her eyelids, a fundamental world of distilled elements linked together with a wireframe of distances and angles...
Without looking, Agapita thrust her arm out of cover and fired two shots. She waited a few seconds, and then hauled herself up to look over the rock.
The two guards lay face down in the dirt, limbs in prone position and by all appearances ready to shoot – except that their two round craniums were cracked and leaking like popped pimples.
Agapita afforded herself a smile. It had been very good of them not to shift their positions, really.
Using the rock as a support, Agapita slowly pushed herself back to her feet, testing how much weight she could put on her damaged legs and clicking her jaw with her hand to make sure that the ricochet into her face had done nothing practical. After making the polite gesture of patting herself down, she began limping over to the two dead guards, glancing up the slope as she did so. She hoped that no-one would hold it against her if she took the path from now on.
For a second Avise was completely bamboozled by the sight of the Desert Eagle. If the sky could rain pistols, why couldn't the rivers flow with milk and honey and queuing at the Post Office not take all morning? He then remembered the patron who had boastfully shown off the pistol earlier – when Avise had kicked everything off the man must have thought that he could be some sort of hero, only for the clumsy amateur to get jostled and drop it in everyone else's scrum to get out. Giorgio seemed as surprised by the pistol's presence as Avise was, only noticing the weapon when his fingers brushed against the butt of its grip.
Despite his lofty rank and station Giorgio wasn't such an urbane sophisticate that he would laughingly dismiss the blessings of God. His eyes rolled down to the Desert Eagle.
His eyes swivelled back up to Avise.
The two men blinked at each other.
Then with the light-fingered flash of a card sharp, Giorgio's hand was suddenly fixed around the Desert Eagle's grip and rising.
It was five strides to the settee – Avise would never make it in time. Yelling a wordless cry of animal effort he flung his empty MP5K at Giorgio with all the force that he could muster, its body clipping the knight in the side of the head and catching him off balance as he made to stand up. With a cry of alarm Giorgio fell back behind the settee and out of sight. The Desert Eagle boomed, a shot cannoning through and exploding another of the upper-level balustrade's glass panels. As the MP5K was thrown forward, Avise fell back, scrambling back over the spread-eagled body of the first guard to snatch up his Webley, break open its cylinder, spring out the spent rounds, and ram home a half-moon clip—
Giorgio clenched the leather upholstery of the settee as if he was grabbing a lunk of hair. He sprang up around the side of the settee, swinging his arm around in a wide arc to bring his weapon to bear... and see that Avise was already pointing his Webley directly at him.
Avise's finger tightened on the trigger – and twitched off. Giorgio wasn't a coward – he had skill, and the spirit to use it – and in witnessing that Avise suddenly felt his earlier pang of admiration for these people, their faculties and stature and achievements, swim up in front of him once more. It was something special, distinct, precious, something which justified the blessings of the human condition and held its image apart from the swarm of the flock or the herd or the mass – Avise realised that he didn't want to destroy it.
Rather than shooting Giorgio through the heart Avise aimed down and put a bullet through his thigh instead.
Giorgio howled loudly and collapsed where he stood, the Desert Eagle thudding heavily to the carpet beside him. Avise immediately paced over to him and kicked both the Desert Eagle and the spent MP5K away before squatting down over the lamed Master of Ceremonies. Giorgio was still yowling and his hands batted and pressed at Avise's face weakly, so with an irritated grunt Avise roughly grabbed one of Giorgio's arms, wrenched it down and pinned it under his knee whilst he pulled off Giorgio's belt and tightened it around the man's wounded leg as an improvised tourniquet.
Avise was interrupted from his work by the sound of a groan wheezing out on the far side of the room. The handler flashed his Webley around to confront the second guard – the one whose legs had been glassed – with his hands around the upper-level balustrade and wearily dragging himself into a sitting position.
"Easy, boy..." Avise warned the guard. The guard's head rolled around slowly. Apparently he had been unable to see through the fog of pain and had been unaware of Avise until the handler had voiced his attention – but the sight of the Webley made his eyes snap open. Seeing violence as imminent rather than merely threatened, the guard threw up his own MP5K, a surge of adrenalin damping the pain of his lacerated limbs.
"Cuntlips!" Avise swore angrily, shooting all five remaining rounds in his revolver. The one-handed fire was inaccurate and two shots missed completely while a third only hit the guard's vest, but the fourth bit into the meat of his arm while the fifth formed his final sensation, smacking away half of his jaw in a thick messy splurge of bone and gore. The guard fell onto his side, rotating as though his pelvis was a pivot, and didn't move again.
Avise puffed out a sigh through his cheeks and stood up, the pressure on Giorgio's trapped leg making him squeak and whimper. Giorgio had spent his lungs now, but he continued to gasp and hiss and whine, reaching and stretching for his wound – but while his hands could turn a trick and conduct an audience, he couldn't lay them on and heal the sick.
"Oh, stop whining, you big wet nancy," Avise growled, "you've only been shot. Save it for something serious." As he spoke Avise put a hand around the barrel of his Webley and pulled open the top-breaking cylinde to reload it again. As the spent casings sprang up towards his face, Avise paused for a moment as a certain realisation struck him. He'd owned this pistol for close to two decades. After passing out from the officer's college at Modena he had had a week's leave before having to present himself for his first assignment, which he had spent at home with his mother and younger sister (and wasn't that a blast from the past, given the parlous state of his family relations now). He had gone to the cupboard in the corner of the spare bedroom which had held what remained of his late grandfather's possessions: his mother had always wanted to sell off his grandfather's medals to a collector, particularly in the years after his father's death when money was tight, and especially wanted to be rid of his awards from the Fascist Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano, the army of the Salo Republic, which she considered to be an embarrassment. Avise had appealed and won to sentimentality, though (apart from the fact that his grandfather didn't have any bravery decorations and his common campaign medals weren't especially valuable), and one more thing fallen in that pool was the Webley, which he had picked out of a small cardboard box, wrapped in a cushion of crinkly papier-mâché and which looked as though it hadn't even seen air or daylight since the war. He'd cleaned it, oiled it, gone to the local gunsmith and asked about getting ammunition for it. His company commander in the regiment had upbraided the young Second Lieutenant Mancini and spent an hour educating the spit of a one-pipper as to the logistical and doctrinal importance on standardisation and uniformity when he had asked about policy on personal firearms. Avise had carried the Webley with him back to its far-distant home in Somalia, and then on to further fields in Cyprus, East Timor, Kosovo and Iraq. In eighteen years – and fifty more before that – the Webley had fired misses, a couple of woundings, and killed those dogs that had chewed up his arm...
...but today was the first day that Avise had ended the lives of human beings with it.
Avise loaded a fresh clip of rounds and snapped the cylinder of the Webley shut. He patted the barrel into his palm a few times in idle thoughtfulness, before closing his fingers about it and rubbing it in his grip. He hoped to communicate to it that it wasn't a waste of metal on the press like the disposable plastic gadgets that they sold in the shops, but had fulfilled its function and proved its purpose.
Avise pushed the Webley back into his chest holster. He stepped over Giorgio to gather up the thrown MP5K, and then retrieved some spare magazines from the bodies of the three dead guards in the room. He broke up the Desert Eagle and the two other MP5Ks and threw their firing blocks through the broken window plates and over the edge of the veranda, just in case Giorgio got the notion in his head that he would muster some defiant crawling courage.
"Unfasten that belt in ten minutes' time." He turned to Giorgio and instructed him levelly whilst he reloaded his acquired submachine gun. "Leave it for half a minute, and then fasten it again, as tight as you can. Unfasten, rest, and refasten at fifteen minutes intervals, otherwise we might end up needing to amputate it."
"Shhhhrrguuuuurrrl!" Giorgio emitted something that was equal parts sigh, growl, and drowning bubble. Avise shrugged, and then turned away towards the hall to begin clearing the rest of the villa.
The black Hum-Vee's engine roared as the hulking vehicle stormed a path on the road back down to Agrigento, its overtaking scarcely more than barging other cars aside and making oncoming vehicles swerve aside onto the verges, their horns wailing terrifiedly.
There had been protests from the patrons at leaving their own cars behind, but if the Gladiator Games were rumbled then the cars were already marked, and a long snaking column of vehicles on a single road would be no less obvious – at least with this heavy vehicle barrelling down the hillside the patrons who had piled into it, with two of their guards in the front, at least had a chance of making themselves scarce once they reached the town. And to be quite honest, even despite the awful and atrocious situation that had developed back at the villa, the giddy, high-pitched, slightly demented laughter that sounded when the Hum-Vee slewed around a corner at speed indicated that it was actually still somewhat thrilling.
The road started to zig-zag across the hillside as it began the descent into Agrigento. At each corner there was a rough gravel lay-by to allow cars whose brakes had failed on a downward run some room to lose speed rather than just catapult themselves off the road. They weren't supposed to be used as rest-stops for precisely that reason, as it invited collisions, but in the lay-by at the end of the the Hum-Vee's current straight the contrastingly curvaceous shape of a Ferrari F430 was parked. Naturally such a remarkable vehicle in such an irregular situation attracted attention, and as the eyes of the Hum-Vee's driver focused in on the Ferrari, they also noticed that a long-haired girl was leaning out of its window ...
...and that she was firing a rifle!
The driver instinctively braked as the first shots sparked and spanged off of the Hum-Vee's toughened front, and then jerked aside as one shot ricocheted off of the bonnet and starred his windscreen, but the loss of speed only gave the Ferrari's gunner more time to press her attack, and shots continued to pummel the Hum-Vee's engine compartment. Realising what was happening, the driver regained his composure, opened the throttle and sped down towards the corner, aiming to sweep past the Ferrari and leave it behind – but as they approached, the Ferrari smoothly began to move, rolling and then accelerating forward with nary a decibel of over-revving or the slightest twitch of a misapplied clutch, and neatly slotted itself in ahead of the Hum-Vee on the next long straight of the zig-zag.
The Hum-Vee sought to push ahead of the F430, or shove it aside, but with its tighter handling and efficient engine the Ferrari easily – almost nonchalanatly – coasted outside of the truck's reach. The Ferrari had complete control of the road, and with it being too narrow to turn around without stopping, the Hum-Vee was entrapped, having no choice but to keep barrelling down in the hope that the F430 driver's concentration would break before the armour on their own vehicle did, and he made a mistake that they could exploit – but all the while, the girl was there, her black hair flailing in the rushing wind but quite dauntlessly (especially seeing as any incoming traffic could have swiped her head off) continuing to direct disciplined, regular, rapid bursts of fire into the front of the Hum-Vee. The Hum-Vee's front passenger tried to respond by blazing away with a pistol around the window, but all the girl did was adjust her next burst to the left slightly and swat away the offending weapon with a bullet through the perpetrator's arm. Even though it was careering along at fifty miles an hour on a narrow mountain road, the Hum-Vee was impotent – pinned like a wrestler as the numbers counted up to defeat, and flailing uselessly to try and squirm out from an iron hold that had veritably transfixed it.
As the two vehicles reached the end of the third straight, the Ferrari put on an additional burst of speed, conjuring up power seemingly from sorcery with the maddening way that its driver just always applied that little bit more effort than the Hum-Vee, and jumped forward to take the corner with a lead. As it drifted around the bend, the gunner fired one final, lengthier sustained burst from her rifle. Even with an armoured body the Hum-Vee could only sustain so much much damage, and it seemed that being pummelled by three magazines' worth of ammunition from an XM8 rifle, directed carefully and unfalteringly, had overwhelmed it. Its engine noise died away in a choking grip; the steering suddenly became leaden and unresponsive; black smoke began gouting billowing ashen streams thought the ruptured radiator and bonnet and having its fumes seep into the cabin, reducing everyone present to hacking fits. Spent and confounded, the Hum-Vee wearily trundled into the lay-by and slumped into a stop.
The Ferrari drew up on the side of the road itself a couple of hundred yards further down the next straight, and Kara immediately disembarked, sprinting back up to the Hum-Vee to arrest its occupants. Michele, the driver who had so smoothly negotiated the brief confrontation with a suave minimum of fuss, was about to follow her at a more leisurely pace but turned instead to the blare of a siren – a Carabinieri Land Rover was coming up the slope towards them. Two policemen disembarked – the fact that they weren't fleeing or calling for backup suggested that they hadn't seen the chase and were thinking that this was a case of a breakdown – by the time their eyes processed the unusual situation Michele was already in their faces, smiling genially and holding up his government credentials.
"No need to concern yourself with this, friends." Michele reassured the two Carabinieri. "Breakdown repair, that's all. Ordinary business – you can move on."
"Breakdown repair? In a Ferrari?" One of the Carabinieri spluttered incredulously, even though Michele was shaking his government badge in a meaningful way.
"Oh yes." Michele nodded. "The Sicily Auto Agency does guarantee that mechanics will respond to any call from its members within half an hour, after all." He glanced back to the F430 and the wrecked Hum-Vee. Kara was covering the shaken-looking people slowly and tremblingly emerging from the passenger compartment of the black carriage. The two guards delayed for a moment, weighing their chances to run or fight – but not to mention the fact that one of them had a wounded arm, when there were cliffs both high and low all around and a readied enemy wielding an assault rifle, an accurate assault rifle, the prospects weren't promising. They threw their remaining weapons out of the windows and got out to join the patrons kneeling down around the back of the Hum-Vee.
"And what insight into engineering can be contributed by a gun?" the second Carabiniere asked with what he must have thought was sly conspiratorial coolness rather than a myopic and imbecilic inability to understand an implication.
"An essential component in any mechanic's toolbox." Michele explained. "In case the fan belt has broken and no lady may spare a stocking – as comely as her bare legs might be – we use it to make air-holes in the bonnet." He was still holding up his government badge.
Still prodding forward with curiosity, the senior of the two Carabinieri looked past the badge and over Michele's shoulder – and then he blanched and stumbled back in an open, horrified take as he began to see just who were being offered the opportunity to patronise roadside services.
You didn't need to be a spy to pick up on such a complete failure of composure. Michele raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Sir, would you happen to know these people by any chance?"
"Er, no, n-n-not at all." The Carabiniere stammered like a first-year schoolboy in front of the headmaster.
"That's a great pity. Are you sure? It would be helpful to us to know their driving history; we can improve our service with tailor-made advice, then." Michele shook his head sadly at an opportunity for good business being lost.
"I-I'm afraid not, terribly sorry." The Carabiniere turned around to head back to his Land Rover, grabbing his partner by the arm and almost dragging him along as he did so. "Come on Pieri, we have a lot of paperwork to do at the station." The second Carabiniere was momentarily baffled and looked as though he was about to protest, but seeing his partner so obviously spooked clammed him up. He hurried along behind the senior Carabiniere, who was walking with a stiff, inflexible stride that indicated that his brain was pleading with his legs not to break into a run. They got back into their Land Rover, which took off past Michele and down the hill as if it was in a chase of its own.
Michele smiled as they went. He genuinely wished the two policemen every success – if nothing else the tale of the day when they, mere humble coppers, had one fated brush with the stuff of thrillers would keep them in beer in the tavernas for some time to come. And if there was genuinely something amiss with that Carabiniere, well, it'd come out in interviews with their new guests – let the bent badge stew in panic for a few days, he'd taste all the sweeter.
As he walked the short distance to Kara, Michele's mobile phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked a text message as he moved. "The Section One catch-wagons are on their way up from Agrigento, Kara," he informed her, "and should be here in fifteen minutes or so. Just keep covering him until then."
Kara nodded in reply. Michele noticed that a number of their prisoners were openly gawping at his cyborg, and while the sight of an Asian teenage girl in a skirt (and Gucci boots) covering them with a prototype rifle whose curves made it into some sort of sci-fi laser-blaster was certainly distinct, the close interest was indecent. Michele followed their eyes and started himself when he saw that his cyborg's cheek has been torn and a flap of flesh was hanging loosely from the side of her face, exposing her teeth.
Michele winced. "Are you alright there, Kara?"
"It's just cosmetic, no big deal." Kara reassured her handler, not taking her eyes or her aim off from their prisoners as she did so. "They could have ripped up my jacket instead!"
"Thank Heaven for small mercies." Michele murmured. "And on that topic, if they were aiming at you at least they were directing their shots away from the pristine body of my precious Ferrari."
"Jerk!" Kara cried, although half of her face twitched in a smile to indicate that she understood it was only a bit of gentle teasing.
There was a gust of wind as a civilian car approached the corner. As it swung around, adults and children stared at the scene with saucer-eyes through their windows, before shooting off down the next straight with indecent haste.
Kara tossed her head and her long dark hair haughtily. "Rubberneckers!"
Where one of the Hum-Vees had swung round down to Agrigento, the second had turned the other way up towards Selinunte. It had pounded the asphalt no further than a mile when a silver Toyota Corolla suddenly burst out of the recessed concealed entrance of a farmhouse's driveway, darting out into the middle of the road with a forte crescendo of engine power. The Hum-Vee screeched a tyre-flaying brake to avoid a collision, but the driver was skilled and dropped gears down to smoothly accelerate back up to speed rather than pitch into a stall. The Hum-Vee then gunned a burst of power and sprang forward in an attempt to shunt the Corolla and use the Hum-Vee's weight and girth to barge the lighter street car off the road. However, the Corolla had been enhanced with a custom twincharged engine, and neatly hopped forward to avoid being caught on the Hum-Vee's horns.
For a few seconds the vehicles kept their relative positions on the road as they contemplated their next moves – even though the surrounding countryside had streaked into a blur, the cars were still, drifting lightly and slowly across the width of the road like two martial artists slowly circling each other and trying to read their stance and anticipate an attack.
The Corolla made the first move, jinking to the side, while an orange flash from a rear passenger window indicated that this was a freestyle match. The Hum-Vee was alert and responsive though, and moved with the Corolla so that the gunshot that had been directed to tearing open its wheel did no more than chip an insignificant sliver from its front. The Corolla attempted the manoeuvre twice more, but each time the Hum-Vee matched its move and caused the shots to glance ineffectually off its armoured shell. Evidently deciding that its opponent had had a fair throw of the dice, the Hum-Vee took the opportunity to retaliate, as its front passenger thrust an MP5K out of the window and plastered the rear of the Corolla with a sustained burst of fire, pummelled and puncturing the boot with dents and dimples, shattered lamps and etched frost into its rear window.
Inside the cabin of the Corolla, Brian clutched himself around the length of his HK416 assault rifle (wincing a little as he burnt his chin on the hot muzzle) and rolled into the rear footwells, thankful for the armoured plate that had been installed in the back of the car's boot but not trusting it to hold.
"Allison!" He yelled to the ceiling. "Why the Hell did you move early? We should be pursuing them! They could move down a junction and we couldn't respond to it!" Not to mention that the Hum-Vee would be shooting through the front of the vehicle and Allison was a lot more durable than he was.
"Simple!" Allison yelled back from the driver's seat, glancing in the rear view mirror to check that the Hum-Vee was directly behind her. "It's so I can do this!"
The Corolla had lost one brake light but the remaining one blazed an angry crimson of narrow squinting fury, and smoke screeched from its tyres, flaring out from each side like the acrid, sulphurous and laden breath of a dragon's nostrils. The Hum-Vee was alarmed at seeing the other vehicle try to brake back into it and wreck both vehicles into a tangled mangle as each tried to roll over the other - the light truck might have been heavier and capable of easily surviving a shove or swipe or knock, but a direct impact and lasting collision was a different matter and would rip the chassis apart. The Hum-Vee immediately swerved to one side – but the Corolla did not slide back into the position that it had just vacated. The car hadn't braked at all – it had just deployed smoke from canisters as a ruse. Now, the Hum-Vee's side was clearly presented, and the angle of attack was perfect.
Fire hammered back from the Corolla, with three heavy bursts blasting through the Hum-Vee's front passenger window and shredding its gunner in a whickering whirl of lead and glass, before switching down to rend through its front and rear wheels, shattering hubcaps like plates and stripping off rubber like ragged orange peel. Hum-Vees were equipped with air pumps that could reinflate tyres and keep them running even when punctured – but they were of little use when there were no tyres left to pump to.
With two wheels literally smashed from their axles it was like sweeping out and knocking a leg out from underneath the Hum-Vee. The truck collapsed onto the edge of its chassis, and grinding up a distended wail of scraping sparks and tortured metal it span around twice, literally tearing a ragged furrow through the tarmac of the road before pitching off the side and bashing through a dry-stone wall, finally shuddering to a steaming, creaking halt.
The Corolla now sprayed some genuine smoke and neatly flipped around in a tight half-doughnut, its engine braying boastfully, before slowing down to a casual saunter that drew to a stop on the opposite side of the road to the wrecked Hum-Vee.
As she picked up her Kimber Custom pistol from where she'd kept it in the driver's door's side-pocket, Allison glanced at the two looping circles that the Hum-Vee had ploughed through the surface of the road, cutting through the skin of asphalt and bleeding out churned-up stone onto either side of the wound. "Just like figure-skating." She sighed happily, her eyes rolling with the trail.
Both cyborg and handler got out of the Corolla. Brian went over the boot to don a high-visibility jacket and pull out some road signs (hoping that the earlier gunfire had not torn them up too badly) to position further down the road to reassure any incoming motorists that the accident was being dealt with and to dissuade good Samaritans from stopping to help the sick man on the side of the road; Allison made to cross the road and cover the dazed occupants of the Hum-Vee (and survivors, this time, with the shattered edges of the front passenger window highlighted in red) who were stumbling out and collapsing down around it.
"Hey, wait, Allison!" Brian called out.
"What is it, sir?" Allison turned back to her handler, a little perplexed.
Brian tapped a finger towards the rear edge of their Corolla. "Highway Code. You're stopping on a thoroughfare – don't forget to put on your hazard blinkers!"
The path leading down from the villas followed the edge of the estate around until it reached the shore. The patrons, running or jogging as their age or composure allowed them to, glanced fearfully over the low, half-finished walls which until recently had been a den of entertainment, yet now dragged at them like the sucking edges of a pit of foreboding. A good view did not necessarily mean a front-row seat.
By some mercy the motor-cruiser was still moored to the pontoon – while a pair of guards were hopping anxiously on the cockpit and looking towards the villa with fretful expressions, evidently fear of losing their pay had prevented them from casting off and getting out themselves. The patrons all sighed in relief and thankfulness, although whether their exhalations of gratitude were offered up to the Lord or to Mammon, who could say?
By the shore was a long, low hut, presumably originally intended to be a chandlery and canoe store for the marina that was never made, that served as the aid station for wounded Gladiators that had retired from the fight. A doctor in a bloody smock was emerging from the hut, followed by a line of the three walking wounded who had survived the match, supporting themselves on crutches.
"What's going on?" The doctor demanded.
"It's the cops!" The lead patron gasped. He wasn't going to make an issue of the doctor's lack of proper polite form in this situation. "We need to get out, now!"
"I thought that they'd all been paid off!" The doctor shouted, although he seemed more angry than fearful – something about his clinical character must have taken exception to the notion that a procedure was not being followed exactly.
"Evidently not enough!" The patron scowled. "Greedy little graspers—"
The patron was interrupted by a loud sound, like the anbaric arcing crash of powerful floodlights switching on. He looked past the baffled-looking doctor, and his own eyes widened in awful, uncomprehending horror as the cruiser... dropped. Literally dropped. The boat did not so much sink as fall, as if it had been suspended in air rather than water, and dropped until it struck the bed and only the cockpit was visible above a surface that had swallowed the cruiser with the efficiency of variably-dense fluids settling into their levels, with scarcely a ripple – except for a pair of very confused guards floundering in the water where the sudden loss of footing had pitched them. It was almost darkly comical, but—
"That'll be enough, ladies and gentlemen." A gruff voice called out. "Get down on the ground, if you would."
Everyone spun round to the source of the sound. Standing atop a mound and looking over the scene were two people – a middle-aged man and, bizarrely, a young girl, one with a grizzled greying beard while the other had a lank mess of red hair tumbling down her back. Both were dressed in wetsuits and were still dripping – but the rifles in their hands were dry, and hot.
The two guards in the water kicked up some white foam, seeing distance and intervening targets as an opportunity to swim off around the nearby headland and get away – but they were driven back to the shore when the older man twitched his arm up and barked a terse burst of bullets to spash into the water around them ("I'd have just shot 'em. Sunken bodies blow up hilariously." the girl murmured out of the side of her mouth). The harsh, curt commanding reports overwhelmed the civilians and they immediately pressed themselves into the ground. The gladiators paused, and then followed, albeit creaking down more slowly and gingerly to relieve the pressure their wounded bodies – they had got involved in this game for practicality's sake, and there was no utility in trying to go against a pair of fit opponents who already had them cold.
But some gladiators approached their agents because they were chancers risking all on a last desperate, dramatic and determined throw of the dice. One didn't see two special forces operatives, but an old duffer well past it, and some weird deformed midget – both of whom were relaxing, thinking that their enemies were cowed. True, the gladiator's left arm was useless, a clutch of shots stripping the flesh down to the bone... but then, he was right-handed.
Launching up from a kneeling position, the gladiator reached under the doctor's jacket, yanked a handgun out from his back, threw it up, and fell back down. He convulsed, jerked, juddered, trembled, and finally twitched until the hard chak of the empty bolt of the small girl's Kel-Tec sounded out. When his body was more soup than solid it was difficult for him to do anything else.
"Elio said, stay down." The girl said stroppily.
The older man, the one called Elio, winced. "Marisa, that was a little bit excessive."
The young girl, Marisa, smiled broadly despite the admonishment. "But sir, there's 'no kill like overkill'!"
Danio's co-pilot leaned over to tap him on the shoulder, and then hocked a thumb back into the passenger compartment of the Super Puma. "Some of our guests are feeling a bit queasy."
Danio pulled on the joystick and felt his stomach roll as he brought the helicopter skidding up another slope – but to him it was a pleasant sensation, a core of weight and worth in his chest, the bubble of a spirit level. He grinned back at his co-pilot. "Unique experience that cannot be found anywhere else – it's what they paid for!"
They both laughed. Truth be told, Danio was actively enjoying himself – flying low to follow the contours of the ground was demanding and exhilarating, and he hadn't had a chance to do it since testing for his license. He wasn't particularly worried about the explosion at the villas. He had got himself, his vehicle and his cargo away, and he had already scheduled an arrival at the Palermo heliport in advance. There were lots of empty fields gone to seed in Sicily's interior as increasingly numbers of farmers gave up on agriculture and moved on – it would be simplicity itself to put down in one of them, pause for a few minutes to strip off the fake registration number currently painted on the side of the Super Puma. After that, callsign Dela-Hotel-Zero-Fower - not Sierra-Oscar-Too-Hait – could ascend back to standard cruising height and make its way over to Palermo at its leisure, allowing both his passengers and himself to remove themselves as casually as they pleased as though nothing was amiss – the perfect service: the presence of danger was no need to lose your relaxation. Danio banked the helicopter in long, lazy rolls up the curves of a V-shaped valley cutting through the hillside, held poised on the crest of an arc over the hilltop, and then almost cheered as he blew down the far side in a bluster of dust and rotors—
BANG! The whole helicopter quivered.
"SHIT!" Danio yelled aloud, jerking back on the joystick and lurching the Super Puma to a queasy halt and a bleary lurk of a lever hovel. There were no warning lights on his control panel - had they collided with something? "Did we scrape a tree? You're supposed to be watching out for that stuff, you stupid fuck!" He bawled openly at his co-pilot.
The co-pilot looked panicked. "But the field's clear! You can see it yourself! I don't—
"Callsign Delta-Hotel-Zero-Fower, calling Callsign Delta-Hotel-Zero-Fower," the radio bleeped, and not with a call to 'Sierra-Oscar-Too-Hait', "this is Ground Station... Pasta. Are you receiving me?"
Danio and his co-pilot looked at each other. "Keep our patrons calm." He growled under his breath. The co-pilot nodded, slipped off his headset and made his way back into the passenger compartment while Danio switched his radio to 'transmit'. "Ground Station, uh, Pasta, this is Callsign Sierra-Oscar-Too-Hait. Pardon me for interrupting, but I've been running shuttles all morning and I can tell you that there's no aircraft of Callsign Delta-Hotel-Zero-Fower currently aloft. Are you certain that you have the right reference?"
The response was immediate "Oh, I'm fairly certain that we do, Mister Danio Enris. Now, you might be wondering what that noise you heard earlier was. There is an adhesive mine currently attached to your hull. Any attempt to deviate from the instructions that I am about to give you will result in its immediate detonation without warning. Thanks a lot for flying so low, incidentally – it made aiming a lot easier for my girl."
"Danio, what's going on—" the co-pilot bent back into the pilot's compartment, and his words died in his throat when he saw Danio's expression. The co-pilot quietly slipped into his seat and restored his headset.
"There is a field a quarter of a mile ahead of you at bearing zero-fower-sex degrees magnetic," the voice that was 'Ground Station Pasta' explained, "marked by orange smoke. You are to make your way to that location, put down there and turn off all engines and instrumentation. Any attempt to deviate from this course will result in your helicopter's destruction – and it's such a nice luxury VIP model too, it'd be such a shame."
With his earlier ebullient confidence comprehensively swept away, like straw in a helicopter's fierce downdraft, Danio seemed to work entirely by automatic – he was, after all, one of the Help. The Super Puma slowly thopped over to the designated landing zone, thick coloured smoke pouring from a clutch of thrown grenades like the feather on the quarrel that had marked him. As Danio lowered the helicopter down to the ground, Section Two support staff dressed in combat fatigues and bushed up with vegetation began to rise up from a circle of undergrowth surrounding the landing zone and make their way towards it, pulling the noose tight.
The co-pilot watched someone pull off a helmet to reveal a woman who shook out a short bob of black hair that settled neatly and didn't seem rumpled by having a lid pressed on top of it. He turned back to Danio. "I've got a Saturday Night Special in the equipment locker. Do you want to throw it in the passenger compartment, try and say that we were threatened?"
Danio thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on the joystick. "Nah... not worth the bother. We'd only get done for illegal possession, too."
"Thank you for your continued co-operation." The radio buzzed a final message and warning. "Ground Station Pasta, out."
A short distance away, Marco Toni released the pressel from his radio handset and placed it back down on the set. He turned away from the open boot of the car towards Giada, who was still keeping her TAC-15 crossbow trained on the sky just in case Danio decided to spin up his rotors again. Marco paused for a moment as he beheld the cyborg – Giada was no less than radiant in the bright daylight, her short blonde hair charged with the sun and shining like a nimbus.
"Very good, Giada," Marco managed eventually, "well-hit and well-done. You can stand down now."
Giada immediately began diassembling her TAC-15, sliding off the arrow bed from the body of the AR-15 rifle on which it was mounted. She nodded her head and said simply, "Thank you, sir."
The double-doors granting exit from the main lounge led to a short passageway which then opened out to a large open cubic space which was called the hall but was more like a small lobby. A mezzanine ran along the rear and one side of the upper level of the hall, with doors leading off to bedrooms and studies, while a staircase led down the third side. The wall towards the front of the villa had the entrance, above which was a fine set of large bay windows which invited ample natural light. Various accessories and accoutrements that the patrons had dropped in their flight – blackberries, glasses cases, a couple of handbags with their contents kicked to the corners – were scattered across the parquet floor, but otherwise the hallway appeared empty.
The passageway from the lounge had a door on each side of it – one Avise knew to be the kitchen, while the other was an interior room that he had not investigated yet. He was just about to kick the door open when he heard a creak on the stair in the hall.
Avise immediately darted forward to where the passageway opened out into the hall. In the light, he saw dark clothing, a face turning towards him, the flashing steely glint of gunmetal—
The handler swept his arms back and forth in front of him, raking the stairs with sustained fire from his MP5K. The spokes of the banister snapped like matchsticks, and the figure cried out with a high-pitched shriek before toppling to one side, crashing through the weakened banister and splaying out over the floor of the hall.
Avise frowned as the body hit the ground. Something didn't seem right. He paced forward to the body – although he still span around to sweep the barrel of his weapon up across the mezzanine in case anyone else was positioned there – to inspect it more closely. It was a woman – and from her complexion, creased as it was by a final fatal expression of pain, a relatively young one, still in her younger twenties. Her clothes were black, but she was wearing a long, ankle-length skirt as opposed to a suit – she certainly did not give off any impression of being crew in the way that the guards he had just fought in the lounge had. In fact...
...she wasn't wearing a suit, or even a dress. It was a uniform. An actual, genuine, traditional maid's uniform.
Avise's eyes widened in alarm and he hissed a sharp inhalation as he processed what this entailed. He hastily reached over the maid's body to snatch up the weapon that he thought she had been carrying. It was with a flood of merciful relief that he saw that it was an actual pistol, recognising it immediately as a Beretta 92FS, the issue handgun to Army officers and something that he had used himself – but. But. The amateur beneath him hadn't even primed a round or taken off the safety.
"Oh no..." Avise groaned in frustration, massaging his temple whilst he grimaced at the body beneath him. He could see what had happened. The woman – girl? – was actual domestic staff and had been upstairs preparing rooms for the patrons who might be staying over when it had all kicked off. Naturally panicked by the riot breaking out beneath her, she had found a weapon – one of Giorgio's that he kept under the pillows, something dropped by a guard earlier, Avise couldn't say – and even though she was confused and distressed and fearful and uncomprehending, had fixed on the solid weight of the pistol as an anchor of reassurance to level her with the whatever lay outside. And it had gotten her killed.
"You poor fool." Avise sighed sadly as he cradled the girl's cooling cheek, trying to smooth out the lines on her face, and rubbed the impression of a cross into her forehead with his thumb. "You poor, stupid fool!"
Avise flicked his gaze upwards past the ceiling – he wasn't sure himself if it was in question or entreaty – and then back down to the body. After a moment, he came to a decision. The old soldier sighed again, in both regret and resignation. Oh well. No-one had forced the silly girl's actions on her, and he couldn't be responsible for someone else's errors. There was nothing that could be done about it now, except to fix the mistake. Avise took the Beretta pistol, readied it properly and fired several shots into the floor around where he himself had been standing when he'd killed the maid. He then picked up the Beretta's spent casings and flicked them across onto the stairs, before wiping his prints off with a cloth from his pocket and dropping the pistol back down by the body from standing, so that it seemed to scatter across the parquet naturally. To mask things from Giorgio in case he was listening from the lounge, Avise returned to his original position and fired a second burst of shots at the stairs.
There. Now, what had been an ambiguous matter of doubtful information became a clear case of self-defence. That should make things a bit easier for everyone.
Feeling fed up and slightly soiled even though he was certain and unapologetic, Avise gripped his MP5K again and stalked over to the door that he was originally going to break through before this whole incident had intervened. Without pause he fired a burst of shots through the door and then kicked it open roughly.
The room was an interior space without any windows and had utilitarian furniture, chiefly because it was occupied by a large bank of consoles, monitors and laptops along one wall. There was a simple plastic chair (which had been knocked over by Avise's fire), and a man cowering in the corner.
"Don't hurt me! I surrender! Please!" The man wailed openly.
"Who are you? Name!" Avise barked harshly, stepping into the room and keeping his submachine gun trained on the man.
"Felipo Zuszie!" The man was almost crying. "I'm just the camera technician, I swear!"
Avise glanced to one side, taking in the long bank of flickering screens. This must be where they selected the prurient pictures to exhibit for the gathered guests' delectation and edification on the television screens in the lounge. The man might have some intelligence worth on other gladiators and items of surveillance, but Avise had nothing to handcuff him with an in any case didn't want to waste any more time on mooks.
"Stand up!" Avise commanded. "Take a step towards me!"
Slowly and jerkily, Felipo did so. His eyes were wide like saucers, and he dared not blink even though his eyes were burning red.
"Turn around!"
Felipo visibly blanched. "Wh-wh-wh-what are you g-g-gonna do?" He stammered fretfully.
Avise snarled and brandished the MP5K. "Blow your fucking head off if you don't start doing as I fucking tell you! Now turn the fuck around!"
The technician twitched around with a scalded yelp. He trembled on the spot, dreading whatever thing Avise was preparing to inflict upon him. Avise ran over the manoeuvre in his head. Ram the butt into the soft hollow beneath the base of the skull – he'd practised it many times while training as a Prospect before Agapita's arrival, but only ever on dummies. Still, he thought as he raised the MP5K above his head, it seemed simple enough.
Avise slammed the weapon down in a swinging motion, delivering a firm and solid clout to the back of the technician's head. Felipo went down immediately, collapsing onto his knees – but he didn't pass out. Instead, his hand flashed to his head, which he began shaking and screaming loudly and piteously. Avise spat a curse – he wasn't doing very well today, was he? – and clubbed the man again, causing the wails to cut out as suddenly as a switch as he tipped forward onto the carpet, finally rendered unconscious. It should keep him down for an hour.
As the technician's cries stopped ringing around the room, Avise caught another more distant voice snagged onto their fading vibration:
"Help... I'm over here..."
That was Giorgio! Avise realised the identity of the voice with a shocked start, and then ran back into the lounge. Giorgio was still lying on the floor by the settee, but he was reaching an arm weakly towards two guards who had appeared on the veranda – carrying FN FALs. Avise had noticed Giorgio first – but these guards had first noticed him. By the time that Avise had raised his MP5K, the guards were already firing.
With a cry of alarm, Avise stumbled back into the hallway, clumsily grabbing at one of the heavy double-doors and trying to pull it with him to grant him some meagre cover – he was immediately blown onto his back as whole chunks of wood were hammered back out of the door, slamming into the handler like a swinging sack full of rocks.
For a second Avise was stunned – his commands would not be transmitted to his limbs – and so he could only lie there as a voice shouted out, bubbling and bilious with thick, rank, furious choler: "You're dead, Marchese! Fucking dead!"
Marchese...? Oh, wait, yeah. Right. That was him, wasn't it? With a De.
Then another voice. A little hoarse and strained, and less violent. "Geez, almost... I'm getting there... okay?"
Sounded like some odious hormonal brat of a teenager sure that she knew it all. Conceited bint.
Then another long, rattling report.
Then silence.
Responsiveness slowly seeped back into Avise's limbs and he rolled onto his side before putting his back against the wall and using it a support to push himself upright. He ached, but no more – he was sure that it was just bruising – and that was good, because if he didn't have any visible injury then he wouldn't have to cause any anguish or worry to—
"—Agapita!"
The two guards lay crumpled on the terrace – their body armour not much use against assault rifles at close range – and Agapita was stepping unevenly and unsteadily into the room. On hearing Avise's voice she froze still and her eyes opened wide, staring straight at her handler.
God Almighty and all His choirs of angels and saints in Heaven! The cyborg was a sight to behold. Her clothes were tattered and pretty much falling off of her. She was plastered from head to foot in dirt – you could even see a thin mist of dust trailing behind her movements and settling down through the air. Her front was a muddy brown caked mess of cemented blood and sand, while a smear on her leg incongruously shone a bright ruby, trickling veins of red down to her ankle – tracing crazy, jagged courses around the clods of dirt pasted against her shins. She was listing over onto her right leg and a retrieved FAL hung limply in her hand, three fingers not having yet decided if they wanted to let it slip or not. A massive black bruise was spreading across one side of her face like a drop of dye on tissue paper. And yet, on top of it all, her beret remained perched atop her head like a dainty cherry – even if it was on a burnt cake!
The whole scene looked...
...just like Avise once did when being hounded and driven through (and into) the ruts and the potholes all night whilst on a training hike.
Avise laughed – openly, uproariously, fully and happily, sheer pleasure and contentment rippling through his chest.
Agapita looked dismayed. "Oh! I'm so sorry!" She cried anxiously.
"Not at all, not at all!" Avise said brightly. "I just see that no-one can possibly dispute that you gave it your all today."
The cyborg's eyes lit up as though they were halogen bulbs, and obvious glee jabbed the corners of her mouth up to her very ears.
As determined as Agapita had obviously approached her task and as eagerly as she had gobbled up the praise, Avise could see that his cyborg was draining the last dregs of her stamina, scraping the straw around the edge of the can to find the last few films of energy to suck up. The handler motioned towards the settee which Giorgio – now having evidently given up and just lying flat on his back, breathing slowly and regularly – lay beside. "Take a pew, and keep an eye on our esteemed guest there. He's been such a propitious and accommodating host, it's only right and proper that we repay the favour and introduce him to our own hospitality as well. Perhaps you can exchange tips on work ethic, be a good conversationalist?"
Agapita smiled at her handler and stumbled – she was tired and battered, although she didn't want to cause worry to Avise by admitting it unless it was genuinely dangerous – over to the settee, which she heaved down into heavily. After a few seconds to catch her breath, Agapita cranked her neck over to one side.
"Chevalie Giorgio? Excuse me... please?" Agapita wheezed.
Giorgio's gaze tracked over silently to the battered, bruised, bloodied and bedraggled form of Agapita. Agapita returned his recognition with a tired, wan smile.
"Next time... you're feeling bored... can't you just... I don't know... take up stamping?"
(Continued)