Rabid, CH 01 (Patreon)

Something breaks in the other room.

Well, something else breaks. He’s been making a mess of the place ever since—

The computer beeps, my password cracker having made its way through the possibilities. I insert the thumb drive and the transfer starts. This is going to take a while.

The door opens and I shoot the man without looking up. I can still hear Tristan fighting, so no chance that was him. I step over the body and look out at what had been a meeting room across the hall. Well, there are still meetings taking place there. That guy’s face meets the wall hard enough to add another hole to it. The wall, not the face, although that’s possibly flat now. No telling without pulling him out first.

With a roar, Tristan kicks another thug in the chest, and that one goes through the window and lands in the hall at my feet.

I shoot the one on the other side as he takes aim at Tristan’s back. No ruining my man’s fun. He needs it. These last weeks have been hard on him, with the loss of our home, Emil not being around. He has a lot of anger to unleash and who better than those responsible?

Well, those working for those responsible. It’s not like we have any idea who’s the head of this snake still.

Three run into the hall from the stairwell, and I sprint in their direction. The transfer should be fine for the minute it’ll take me to deal with those. One notices me, but by the time he pulls his gun out, he’s within reach, so I slap the hand away and the gun clatters on the parquet floor. I dodge the other one, grab onto the arm, slam my forearm in the elbow, and it bends in the opposite direction it’s meant to.

With nothing more than a grunt, he punches me in the stomach and I’m staggering back. So Tristan’s not the only one following the school of ‘Let’s Ignore our Pain Until it Takes us Down’. I doubt this guy’s got more endurance than my man. 

Partner number one steps on front as I approach. Not going to let me get another shot at their injured comrade. He comes at me with quick jabs I deflect and dodge. He blocks my kick at his side, then side step my punch to his face. He’s good. Boxing is what this looks like. I take the next punch in the side and use the closeness to headbutt him. Then I knee him and the other two look at me in surprise as number one drops to the floor holding his crotch.

“What?” I ask them. “Did you think I’d fight fair?” I am fighting them hand to hand; that’s close enough to fair in my book, all things consid—

The computer lets out a bing to indicate the transfer is done. That was faster than I expected. Maybe the mainframe isn’t as big as my research indicated.

“Times up.” I have my beretta out before they can react and then each a hole in their head. I shoot the one at my feet the same way as he looks up at me hatefully. Right, because I’m the worse monster here. Well, after Tristan. But we aren’t the kind of monsters preying on children. Or who’ll blow up a garage without caring who else gets hurt.

Three deaths resulted because of it.

Not to say of that ruining the work Tristan was putting in making himself one of the neighbors.

I electronically disconnect the drive from the computer. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to introduce a kill switch that fries the delicate components of a thumb drive if the computer is given a chance to send the voltage through.

Don’t just take the computer’s word that it’s safe to pull that drive, kids. Going into the drivers and make sure they’d disconnected yourself. I pocket it, then step over the bodies and enter the meeting room. Tristan spins to face me, his gaze kind of wild. He tracks me as I walk around the broken meeting tables. Seven bodies among its remains. More spread around the floor.

He was the distraction. Loud and brutal, while I got the mainframe’s data. Hopefully, this time it’s going to have something useful.

His breathing slows.

If not, well, I still have a long list of businesses that front for the human trafficking ring for us to take apart looking for a clue as to who is at the head.

The wildness slowly leaves his eyes, and I’m not entirely certain it’s intentional. Some of his control seems to have been eroded by the destruction of our home. He never gets angry with me, but reining it in when he lets it loose on the thugs isn’t the on/off switch it used to be. It’s more of a gradient knob now, and at times, it looks like it resists him.

I put a hand to his cheeks, my tanned hand contrasting with his dark brown skin, and he leans into it the way a wild animal might lean into an unexpected gentle touch. You know, if he didn’t bite your hand off instead. 

Takes a special kind of courage to touch a wild animal. Or pure stupidity. Take your pick which one’s mine.

“Don’t shut it all down on my account,” I tell him. “I’m sure there’s a few inches clear you can let loose on me.”

The smile is slow in forming as his higher brain functions come back to the fore. “And have their reinforcement interrupt us?”

“We can take them even in the middle of that.”

“Can and want to are not the same thing, Alex. When I take you, it will be within the privacy of a secured location.” The kiss is gentle, then he whispers. “But that doesn’t mean I will be any less violent.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” I whisper back.

“Are you done?”

I snort. “You’re still dressed. I’m not even started.”

“Getting the information, Alex,” he replies reproachfully.

“I copied their mainframe and left something behind that might add to that. It’ll depend on how careful they are this time. They’re bound to slip up one of these days.”

“If that was likely, I think it would have happened with one of the previous twenty-seven of these cells we destroyed.”

I grin. “Well, even starting at the tail, you eat enough of the snake and you’ll reach its head.”

“If you don’t die of indigestion first.”

I narrow my eyes. “With that titanium stomach of yours?” Tristan might prefer sticking to his pemmican, but when he doesn’t have a choice, he’ll eat anything on hand. There’s been a time or two when he hasn’t been able to make it to one of his hidden stash in the city and had to contend with… well, even I have a limit on how much grease can drip off my food when I take it off the plate. His expression was utterly impassive as he ate everything on his plate.

I might have been sick for the both of us afterward.

We exit the meeting room and separate. My job is to gather the bodies, and finish the few that didn’t outright die from how Tristan treated them, into the meeting room. Tristan is making whatever adjustment he needs to justify the electrical fire he will start. There might be questions as to the kind of meeting that was taking place on a Saturday, or how they fit all… a quick count, thirty-three employees around the table, but there is a plan for an explosion.

Tristan enters the room carrying packs of plastic explosives.

Not C-4, or any of those other clay-like stuff that people like to call plastique. He rigged actual plastics with volatile chemicals that could be explained as part of toys this ‘toy supplier company’ would be studying. Maybe not in the ratios that render them unstable, but after that explosion, who will be able to tell?

Not the Phoenix Fire Department, that’s for sure. Considering all the previous fires Tristan arranged as part of covering our tracks were filed away as accidental, before I even had to go in and adjust things. 

We exit the building and the rumble of a plane taking off accompanies the late summer heat hitting us. Across the road from this small office strip are warehouses, also closed. The weekends are good for not being noticed in warehousing district.

I smell the melting plastic before we reach the car, an understated two seater he procured earlier today. He drives east a block, which puts us in sight of the seventeen and parks at a gas station.

I’m out before he can say anything. If he stops somewhere coffee is available, he can’t expect me not to avail myself of it. Anyway, we need to justify our stop, right?

I leave the convenience store and throw out the empty coffee cup while sipping the other. I’ve had worse, but it takes a lot of work to ruin coffee, and this place wasn’t willing to put it in. I offer him the beef jerky as I sit in the car and he eyes it as disdainfully as he does my coffee.

I shrug and start on it. Eating through a snake to get to its head is hungry-making work.

In the side mirror, I can just make out a trail of smoke. Then, a ball of fire climbs in the air, followed by thick, dark smoke.

“And that’s number twenty-seven,” I state.

Tristan nods and starts the car as people run to the sidewalk to see what is happening. A phone rings before we move and he hesitates before taking it out.

I know that annoying ring, because they’ve had to contact Tristan so often over these last weeks they aren’t forcing him to get a new phone each time. If not for the fact I no longer have access to my rig, on account of it having been destroyed, I’d have him destroy the thing.

But, under the circumstances, even I need to admit we need Asyr’s help.

“Asyr,” Tristan greets once he set the phone on speaker.

“I found them,” the digitized voice replies.