Chapter Twelve
Nine years ago...
The eighteen-year-old was curled up on the hard concrete floor of the chamber, her raven-black hair slick with sweat and blood, as Jaron Namir landed another brutal kick to her kidneys. She was already bruised heavily from the sparring session, her face bloody, most of her body covered in bruises from the full-contact spar with a man nearly half-again larger then her, and more then twice the mass, given his enhancement cybernetics... holding back just enough not to kill her, or cause permanent damage, being selective where he struck her... but the punishment didn't stop, even as she collapsed to the floor, her body giving out.
She howled in agony, but that just earned her another kick, this time to the gut, making her release all the air from her lungs in a loud gasp, curling-up even tighter. This time she clenched her teeth and didn't let out a sound... as she knew that was the idea. Glaring up at him with eyes of the darkest night, hatred oozing from them.
"Better." - the Israeli cyborg intoned. Motioning her up.
Stumbling, she tried to stand, but there wasn't a single muscle in her body that didn't ache. With a subdued moan, she collapsed again. This earned her another kick. She tensed like a bowstring, but endured it without a sound.
"Does it help? Crying out? Or does it weaken you?" - Namir asked, coldly. That characteristic accent of his, emphasising each word. No trace of either pity or affection in it. Nor sadism or gloating. Just... clinical interest. Evaluation.
The young woman didn't answer, just like she didn't say a word, for two months now. No thoughts. No memories... just a void in her mind, filled with rage and fury, undergoing incessant training and conditioning sessions. Some of them, bordering on torture.
Yet it was all part of a pattern. Complete expulsion of any leftover human sensibility, before the – real – training began. Nobody told her as much, but... she could sense it. A darker purpose.
Strict, specific diet, mixed with psychoactive compounds. Electric shocks at night. Patterns of low-frequency white noise over the speakers at times. Hours upon hours of recorded atrocities displayed on a videowall in every chamber of her domain, scenes of torture, murder, mutilation... screams and agony of the victims. She was bombarded by it several of her waking hours each day, and would sometimes be woken up by it, when asleep.
And the rest of the time, total isolation.
She didn't know where she was. Nobody told her anything. No windows, no portals to the outside. She saw people in white smocks at times, observing her through shaded viewports of the system of chambers that constituted her living space. She overheard them talking about 'Subject 02', or somesuch, as far as her shaky English allowed her to overhear. For the past two months, this sterile series of metal cells, was her whole world. What was there before that... was across that void in her mind. Inaccessible. Beyond her comprehension.
She just glared up at the cyborg male with an empty, hollow gaze. Over the past two months, he was her only... consistent... visitor. Every other day, a new type of torturous training session. One day in between, allowing medical attention to be administered to her, and for her body to... somewhat... heal. And she grew to hate him a little more, each time he visited. Hate him... yet also... look forward to the visits. No matter how much she suffered during the sessions. Aside from him... she had no other human contact. Meals and water were delivered via serving bot.
Her expression twisted into a silent sneer, as she spat at his feet, saliva mixed with blood. Pure murder in her hollow gaze.
He nodded slightly, moving off to the side, picking up a Kukri dagger off the counter nearby. Unceremoniously, he tossed it towards her, the blade clattering to slide within her reach.
"Kill me. I know you want to." - he crossed his arms, staring dispassionately at the bloody, battered, naked female figure.
She snarled, a growl mixed with pain, reaching a slightly-shaking hand for the weapon she was offered. Seeing stars from the shooting pain up her legs, she willed herself to her feet through pure spite, throwing herself at him behind a vicious, yet sloppy, overhead chop of the curved blade.
Easily, he grabbed her wrist, stopping the momentum of the blade milimetres from his forehead.
"Your body is weak. Weakness of the flesh." - he glanced down at her battered, bloodied, swollen trunk and limbs, somewhat... disdainfully.
"Your mind is strong, however. Your will is stronger." - he paused.
"You do not break, you calcify." - he intoned, twisting the kukri's handle out of her grip, then measuredly shoving her back. She expected another sudden attack, as he was so fond of doing, but he simply turned around, heading to the sealed exit doors, laying the weapon back on the counter as he did.
"The first, can be fixed. The other two... if you should ever lose either, you will cease to be of use... Yelena.
She screamed without words, rushing forward to grab the blade even as he exited, going for his exposed back like a panther pouncing on the prey. She saw red, from the rage, completely eclipsing the shooting pain through her body. The doors closed in her face though, denying her the satisfaction.
Sparks flew from the metal doors as she bashed the kukri savagely across their surface, screaming in pure berserk rage, visualising the blade hacking him to pieces. Finally, exhausted, she slid to the floor next to them, breathing in reaction.
For the next dozen minutes, she hadn't moved.
~"Subject 02, move away from the door."~ - a dispassionate female voice sounded over the speakers at some point.
She ignored it, staring emptily ahead. The next thing she felt was a sharp electrical shock delivered through the doors, making her scramble away.
She glared up at the speaker briefly, before the doors slid partway-open... admitting a very unexpected visitor... closing just as suddenly again.
A puppy. The fluffy white-on-black dog scampered into the chamber, approaching her, staring at her with its big, trusting eyes. It gave a soft ~arf~ sound, followed by a friendly lick. It was the cutest, most adorable pupper anyone could ever hope to own as a pet.
The woman stared at it, her empty gaze not changing. No emotion in it. Just... that void, as her grip tightened on the kukri's handle.
The animal whined softly, as if... sensing her distress. It pawed her gently, licking her again, in complete and total trust, trying to cheer her up.
The void turned to berserk rage, as she gripped the poor dog by the scruff of it's neck, and began to... hack it to pieces. The blade rose and fell, like a hatchet, as the hapless animal's frantic whines and pained gasps turned to silence, and blood painted the floor all around her.
Up at one of the observation viewports, one scientist nodded to another, before they moved off. Behind them, Namir stood, arms crossed, watching the carnage.
Present...
You were right Jaron, it does not help. You trained me well... I only wish I killed you myself, to... thank you for all you did to me.
Yelena thought dispassionately, as she slowly segmented back out of her... killer frame of mind, eyes losing the hollow aspect, as the retinal HUD overlay disappeared, and her systems entered 'standby' mode, following a skirmish. She wasn't sure what triggered that particular memory... especially right now, when she literally wasn't thinking about anything, but the task at hand.
She didn't really dwell on it... what the MJ12 agent told her, back there in her grandmother's house. Volkard Rand connection... The early months in Triaxis facility. But somehow... she began remembering more. Memories were a funny thing. They tended to surface when least expected.
The lobby leading to the roof elevator was covered in bodies. An entire squad of Tarvos troops assigned to escort the board members, the Tai Yong delegates and the investors, was dispatched. Six armoured shapes, slumped against the walls, lying on the floor, or draped over a decorative railing near the elevator entrance. They tried to put up a fight, against an invisible wraith dropping from the ceiling. Half of them were down before they even managed to activate the EM vision mode in their helmets – disoriented by a concussion grenade that preceeded the ambush... the rest failed to focus enough fire on the rapidly-moving, twisting, and dodging bright shape on their visors, before inhumanly precise return fire took them down as well.
Some damage to the front chestplate of her thermoptic armour, another pair of rounds being caught there, while some scoring could be also seen on her left cybernetic thigh... a lithe, statuesque female shape appeared out of thin air, with a soft rippling effect, twin Zeniths held at her sides. Her dark eyes unblinking on the cowering dignitaries.
They almost made it to the elevator. Almost.
"Wer bist du? Sind Sie ein... ein Terrorist? Was soll das heißen?!" - one of the people stammered in German.
For a long moment, Yelena didn't answer, looking over all of them, before her gaze settled on the two Board members, the faces of whom were familiar to her from the intel Madalyuk gave them.
She could feel a taste of blood in her mouth, and the near-penetrations did hurt, especially from one round that managed to bury itself into her thorax, past all the layers of armour. That one hurt like hell.
She didn't acknowledge the pain in any way, as her onboard biorestorative matrix did a good job managing and stopping any internal bleeding. The round itself would have to be removed later, of course.
"Vy dvoye. Prikhodit'." - she motioned.
The Russian words made the two board members scowl... instantly connecting the dots. One of them, a heavyset man with receding hairline, crossed his arms.
"Madalyuk tebya poslal? YA ne dumal, chto on opustitsya do nayma ubiyts, chtoby sokhranit' kontrol' nad nashey kompaniyey. Skol'ko deneg vam predlozhili? My mozhem utroit' yego."
Yelena shook her head.
"Delo ne v den'gakh. Rech' idet o printsipakh. I patriotizm. Chto-to, o chem ty zabyl." - nodding at the coterie of Asian suits off to the side – the Tai Yong delegation.
The pain in her chest continued to throb, but none of it showed on her face. Clearly the bullet was lodged quite deeply in the thorax.
The man snorted contemptuously.
"Eto uzhe ne tot mir, v kotorom my zhivem. Patriotizm ustarel. Madalyuk – perezhitok proshlogo veka. Ne bud' durakom. Vy ponyatiya ne imeyete, kakiye interesy stoyat za nami."
This made Yelena smile, coldly.
"Actually, I do." - she replied in English, significantly, adressing the entire group, as she turned her gaze to the three TYM delegates... then suddenly raised her twin silenced Zeniths, and opened fire. They barely had time to widen their eyes, before they were cut down.
The pair of investors gasped in alarm...
"W-wait, please... !" - the regal woman stammered, but had no time to utter anything else, before she and her associate shared the delegates' fate.
The two board members swallowed hard, but the heavyset man's eyes hardened.
"Chego zhe ty zhdesh'?"
"Soobshcheniye otpravleno. Vy dvoye, on khochet, chtoby vy byli zhivy. Ne obyazatel'no nepovrezhdennyy, no zhivoy." - she replied, emphasising the point by lowering her aim, to their kneecaps.
Gritting his teeth, the man nodded, approaching. The other board member, a pale-faced woman, clearly too terrified to even speak, followed suit.
"Eto nichego ne izmenit." - he growled as he got close.
Yelena motioned them forward, to the elevator, as she replaced the magazines in her pistols.
We'll see about that.
Then she opened a channel to Irwine:
~"Status? I have the packages. Is the roof secure?"~
No response came.
~"Mantis to Hawk. Is the roof secure? Packages acquired."~ - she repeated subvocally. But their private link remained dead.
Not jammed, not inactive... it was like it was no longer there. She wasn't picking up his channel at all. In the heat of recent skirmish, she must have missed it.
"Sushchestvuyet problema?" - the curpulent board member suggested. Yelena glanced at him... and the man's microscopic smirk was – unnerving.
~"Mantis? Mantis, respond! What's your status?!"~ - Irwine tried to contact Yelena, but... there was no response. Not a telltale jamming burst of static, or lack of reply... just... not there. It was like the frequency was absent entirely.
At the moment, he was climbing a broadcast tower four blocks away from the hotel, on the other side of it from the churchbell, the goal being to reach a new vantage point and perhaps catch his unseen adversary, the last sniper, by surprise. It was a calculated risk... since the stairway up was pretty exposed. But Irwine was gambling on the assumption that his enemy was still focusing onto the churchbell and the surrounding blocks. Hence why he made such a big circle around.
Looking down at the streets below, he could see the situation was slowly getting complicated. Police cars were converging on the hotel complex, clearly someone had caught on what was going on. No surprise... a blanket jamming of all cell lines in the area, was bound to draw attention, and even without anyone from the hotel actually able to get a call out, the jamming was localised in this neighbourhood of Mayrhofen. The local department didn't have to be particularily intuitive to connect the dots.
But this sudden... absence of frequency... was troubling. He tried contacting the pilot of their VTOL, still stealthily circling above the city, focusing the jamming field on this area.
~"Hawk to Nest, respond. Hawk to Nest, repeat, respond."~
But the same absence was his only response. It was like the entire Infolink comms environment was just... not available over the area, anymore. He knew that the system relied exclusively on a satellite network, separate from every other communications grid on the planet.
Suddenly, a sinking thought occurred to him...
Is someone jamming us? An Infolink-specific dampening field?! Or did someone... shut off the satellites covering this area?
With that thought, he pulled out his phone. But, the same jamming field that their VTOL was using to scramble the cell network, did the same here... and probably Yelena's phone too.
"Shit..." - he muttered, pocketing it again, as the evacuation chopper was coming in for a landing on the hotel roof. He set up, taking aim at the descending dark shape in the night, after he flicked the Whisperhead's scope to nightvision. Without any way to confirm, he had to start operating on assumptions.
Assumption one – Yelena was successful, and she had the packages in custody, now on their way to the roof themselves.
Assumption two – she was still counting on him to lock down the roof, since it was the best place for their own VTOL to come in and pick her and the packages up. He could do that from here.
Assumption three – if he did so, the enemy sniper, wherever he or she was, might reacquire him. One or more of them, of course. He was under the impression he only failed to get one of them, but that was all it was... an impression.
Even using a suppressed weapon, the sudden thermal-flash of weapon discharge would draw attention against the comparatively cold night, if the enemy sniper was using thermal vision. And he had to assume they were. If they happen to be looking his way... he could catch a bullet.
Then again, if they're looking my way they won't be looking her way when she gets to the roof... might give her a chance to jump 'em.
He thought, taking aim at the chopper's cockpit, just as it landed. Taking a deep breath, then letting it out slowly, he squeezed off the first shot. The round caught the pilot into the chest, making the woman slump forward in the pilot's seat. As he worked the bolt, the copilot was frantically scrambling out of his safety harness. But a split moment before Irwine could make the second shot, return-fire came from a dark overhang just below the roofline... the high-powered sniper bullet catching him in the right shoulder, piercing cleanly through both the armour and his collarbone, and exiting on the other side.
The pain was incredible, as he clutched at his shoulder, his suddenly-useless right arm twitching, the rifle clattering out of his grip to land over the railing, into the depths below the tower.
The enemy sniper was indeed paying attention.
"God dammit..." - he pushed through clenched teeth, using his good arm to pull out a sidearm, and scrambling away to hide under the stairwell. Deep below, he could hear raised voices in German...
Oh crap... the cops? Or more Tarvos guys on the ground?
He fervently hoped it was the former, using his teeth to unwrap a roll of bandage from his belt satchel, shoving it into the gaping hole through his shoulder to at least try to slow the bleeding. Then he used a length of rappelling rope, to tie up the whole bundle, apply compression and prevent blood flow to the shoulder. It hurt even more, having to do it with one hand... so much so that beads of cold sweat slid down his forehead under the helmet, as he clenched his teeth hard enough for his jaw to hurt, letting out a keening groan.
If those were Tarvos mercs below, they would just execute him on the spot, most likely. But there was no other way from the tower, and with the Infolink unavailable and the cell lines jammed – he couldn't call for extraction.
Yelena was on her own. Still, at least he got the pilot. And it was a safe bet the enemy sniper's attention was now solidly fixed in his direction.